Worried about Miriam :-(

[adamanteus]

As many of you know, I use amphibians as food occasionally, so I do worry about parasite infestation. I have a microscope and do faecal flotations on my own snakes...... with a little practice, parasite eggs are quite easy to spot.

[Lori P]

The flagellates aren't actually worms, they are a bacteria-- like giardia, or coccidia. (But you can still see them under a microscope) Dr. Engle is treating them with Metronidazole. I think that since since their parents were wild caught, there's an excellent chance they passed this bacteria on to the babies, and then I also think that because Miriam wouldn't eat anything but live fish for so long she certainly picked up more bacteria from them. Now, why she is over run with them while Mordecai is not, could be related to another problem she's having; her immune system could be down, so the bacteria took over. And then it just became a vicious cycle.

They will get treated 2 weeks apart for 3 treatments. He is tubing them, and I'm going to just let him do it each time so we know it's done right.

Miriam weighs just under 4 grams, and Mordecai weighs 20 grams!!!! What a difference huh??!!

I'm testing fecals on all the snakes here now. I think I'll test them every 6 months or so from now on.

[drache]

Lori
I'm so glad you caught it
hopefully you'll find out what led to the parasite bloom, once you've dealt with that part

[anji1971]

Glad to hear it was something you can treat. Best wishes for her now, Lori!

[GarterGuy]

Glad to hear that you were able to catch it and are now treating Miriam. Hopefully with the meds and some extra TLC she'll pull through. Even though it's fun to watch them catch live fish....you might want to think about feeding f/t fish fillet, just to reduce the possibilty of them picking up something. I'm totally paranoid about this and feed all my snakes only f/t foods.

[zooplan]

Good luck, Lori.
I´ve fought flagellates on my new amel. red sided males last year, when they were as tiny as Miriam.
They have grown to 13 and 19 gramms now.

[Lori P]

Hey guys, so, let me run this by you. Miriam is definitley perkier. She was moving around this weekend a little, and keeping her head up more. And so on Sat morning I offered her a pre-killed minnow off the tongs-- and she snatched it!!

However... a few minutes later, she had dropped it.

So I waited a few hours, and tried a guppy-- again, she snatched it-- and then dropped it.

What do you think?? Could her mouth/throat be sore from the tubing?? What makes them strike but drop prey??

Thanks guys...

[KITKAT]

The medication for flagellates is VERY VERY bitter.

Could be a sore mouth, but it is also possible she is just still "shuddering" from the bitter medication... in other words, a memory association.

Give her a couple of days and try again.

[adamanteus]

Wise words, eloquently put, from KITKAT there. A few more days and she'll eat!

[Lori P]

Oh thank you!! That makes me feel better. Mordecai had no such ill effects, in fact he ate two large pinkies and 3 large minnows on Sat-- that's the most he's ever eaten at one sitting!!

Also, I found a product from Jungle Labs today called Anti-Parasite-- it's a medicated fish food. It treats fish for flagellates, trematodes, cestodes (the ones that cause hole-in-the-head), sironucleus, intestinal worms, tapeworms, and nematodes. It contains Metronidazole (that's what the snakes are being treated with), praziquantel, and levamisole. So I'm going to de-worm the fishies from now on before I feed them to the snakes.