@Rick
This is a very interessting thing with the UV-light. I didn't know about those destroying mechanism. As you know I still have a sirtalis x flame cross that's infected with cryptos. The infection isn't really strong, but there is one. It would be propably good if I would install an UV-light and let it shine for some minutes per day. Maybe this would kill the cysts which are defecated by the snake. That would probably avoid the self infect (this is a big problem by this disease).
I don't think that they come from the local drinking system. I think they were "produced" in the watersystem. I cleaned the system out every week (waterchange and some cleaning). My opinion is that the faeces which the snake probably made in the waterpool were pumped through the system and let some residues in the pump system. There (in the pump and the tubes) they couldn't realy get cleaned and had the chance to multiply and infect the snake. Is this possible, or can't protists be developed by contaminated water?
I never had some fish in the pool and didn't get the water out of a stream. This we can except.
@Fons
Yes, they can't be filtered out. They cysts (in german: Oozysten, but I don't know the right english word for it) are only 5 micrometer small.
@CrazyHedgehog
Maybe I misunderstood something, please correct if that wasn't youre question. Yes, I had to kill them, because their condition was getting worser. I didn't do that by myself, a vet doctor did that for me. The fight against those cryptos is very hard. If you have them, such cleaning mechanism wouldn't be enough. I cleaned out the boxes of the sick snakes every 2 / 3 days with "eau de Javel" (do you say that like this? eau de javel is a bleeching solution). But if you don't have them, this is a good thing! The most important thing is to clean out the whaterbowl periodical. I do that once a time in 2 days. If they made faeces in the whaterbowl, I clean it out with some alcohol.
A good solution against cryptos is heat and cold. Some time under 0 ° Celsius will kill them. Therefore I probably will send my last infected snake in the hibernation and cool down the temperature once a week down to 0 ° Celcius for ONLY 2 hours. Probably this will help either. But I'm not sure yet if I really will do that. The material can be cleaned with heat. As far as I know the cysts will be killed by a heat of about 100 ° Celsius.
And yes, i was very very sad about this thing
