warning....

wow... that is very sad.. but I'll stick with aspen as well.

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Originally Posted by JeffJ

isnt it Cell-SORB Plus®? and just to play the other side of the fence. maybe he let it stay soiled for longer then normal given the claims of the substrates amazing ability to absorb feces and kill odour? He could have even thought it was unsoiled if it does what it says and absorbs odour. Urates and Urin wouldn't smell causing them to be overlooked rather then cleaned, especially if the urates were able the drop to the bottom of the substrate like there add claims.

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But that doesn't account for the animals' scratched up faces. The original poster even said he/she doesn't blame the bacteria on the substrate, but that it's just too rough to use with these snakes, and the cuts let any bacteria in the animal. If you go to the original post on KS, the photo shows a pretty scuffed up snake.

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Originally Posted by Tikall

But that doesn't account for the animals' scratched up faces. The original poster even said he/she doesn't blame the bacteria on the substrate, but that it's just too rough to use with these snakes, and the cuts let any bacteria in the animal. If you go to the original post on KS, the photo shows a pretty scuffed up snake.

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i do blame the bacteria because that's what caused the infection. bacterial cultures should not form in that magnitude in a clean enclosure. too rough or not. Scratches on animals face could have been caused by humidity issues or them thrashing from the pain. yes they could have let the bacteria in, but like i said to have bacteria form such an infectious culture like that husbandry issues were probably a prime factor. If this substrate causes wide spread reptile death the wouldn't have a business some one in the good ol' US of A is bound to sue, make a big stink and so on. Its like blaming leprosy on the carpeting in your house because it caused foot soars.

i take everything the person who claims this happened to them says with a grain of salt. i mean he takes the time to ad in the Registered trademark symbol but cannot spell the product he claims caused his wide spread death correctly. he miss spells it multiple times. it smells fishy to me.

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Originally Posted by JeffJ

i do blame the bacteria because that's what caused the infection. bacterial cultures should not form in that magnitude in a clean enclosure. too rough or not. Scratches on animals face could have been caused by humidity issues or them thrashing from the pain. yes they could have let the bacteria in, but like i said to have bacteria form such an infectious culture like that husbandry issues were probably a prime factor. If this substrate causes wide spread reptile death the wouldn't have a business some one in the good ol' US of A is bound to sue, make a big stink and so on. Its like blaming leprosy on the carpeting in your house because it caused foot soars.

i take everything the person who claims this happened to them says with a grain of salt. i mean he takes the time to ad in the Registered trademark symbol but cannot spell the product he claims caused his wide spread death correctly. he miss spells it multiple times. it smells fishy to me.

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Good points. I forgot the thrashing could cause the scuffed appearance, and I do agree the bacteria is the person's fault.

wanted to add that reptile bark is rough as well. so is the rock i had in my snakes enclosure.

like is aid the animal probably hurt its self due to thrashing from the painful infection and or husbandry issues.

i cannot find ANY other documented occurances of reptile death related to cell-sorb plus. if you can please direct me.

I would like to respond to some of the posts here to clarify some misconceptions stated by members. First of all, I originally posted on the “Alterna Forum” on kingsnake.com. My intent was to make people aware of problems using Cell-Sorb Plus® with their Sonora Mountain Kingsnakes and Gray-banded Kingsnakes. I want to point out in my post on kingsnake, I spelled the name of the product correctly. I had nothing to do whatsoever with posting here….the misspellings are not mine, but whoever posted. Furthermore, I don’t think I would have had problems within a month or so of using this product because “Urates and Urin” built up in the enclosure. Why? Because the time period was for the greater part during brumation, when limited amounts of wastes were produced by these animals.

Some other misconceptions/opinions I would like to address is that I do think bacteria caused my problems; however, bacteria are present everywhere and healthy snakes are able to combat infection. I feel that the Cell-Sorb Plus® stressed out my animals so that bacteria could more easily infect the snakes. I don’t feel that I am “blaming leprosy on the carpeting in your house because it caused foot soars.” Also, as far as the scratched up faces, the snake depicted in the image was not photographed after death. The animal is still alive and never once did I observe it trashing around in its enclosure in pain. In fact, once removed from Cell-Sorb Plus®, the condition of the animal improved dramatically.

Also, if you check out Captive Bred Forum, someone else posted having similar problems with Cell-Sorb Plus®. I am only posting about this product as a cautionary note. I have no intentions other than to let snake keepers know of the problems I had with the product using it with medium-sized colubrid snakes.

Finally, whoever posted for me here on the Ball Python forum….thank you. I truly appreciate it. If you have any further questions, do not hesitate to ask. G. Merker

And your sure you didnt just contaminate your setup with a sickness from a expo or something. still does not make any sense. I mean you cant really blame the substrate unless you had a necropsy, and still it would be questionable if you could point the finger.

Unless that substrate its self was exposed to something. There is more then just the substrate thats a connection. just handling them and touching your snake utilities you would be spreading any bacteria or infection. you your self could have had only one sick snake and effectively passed it on to the other just by going through your every day routine.

anyways im still positive there is more to it then illness caused by stress via substrate. It may possible have been a factor but it couldn't have been the "straw that boke the camels back"

funny thing is, some of those symptoms you describe sounds like IBD, but as far as i know it cannot affect colubrids.

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Originally Posted by gmerker

I would like to respond to some of the posts here to clarify some misconceptions stated by members. First of all, I originally posted on the “Alterna Forum” on kingsnake.com. My intent was to make people aware of problems using Cell-Sorb Plus® with their Sonora Mountain Kingsnakes and Gray-banded Kingsnakes. I want to point out in my post on kingsnake, I spelled the name of the product correctly. I had nothing to do whatsoever with posting here….the misspellings are not mine, but whoever posted. Furthermore, I don’t think I would have had problems within a month or so of using this product because “Urates and Urin” built up in the enclosure. Why? Because the time period was for the greater part during brumation, when limited amounts of wastes were produced by these animals.

Some other misconceptions/opinions I would like to address is that I do think bacteria caused my problems; however, bacteria are present everywhere and healthy snakes are able to combat infection. I feel that the Cell-Sorb Plus® stressed out my animals so that bacteria could more easily infect the snakes. I don’t feel that I am “blaming leprosy on the carpeting in your house because it caused foot soars.” Also, as far as the scratched up faces, the snake depicted in the image was not photographed after death. The animal is still alive and never once did I observe it trashing around in its enclosure in pain. In fact, once removed from Cell-Sorb Plus®, the condition of the animal improved dramatically.

Also, if you check out Captive Bred Forum, someone else posted having similar problems with Cell-Sorb Plus®. I am only posting about this product as a cautionary note. I have no intentions other than to let snake keepers know of the problems I had with the product using it with medium-sized colubrid snakes.

Finally, whoever posted for me here on the Ball Python forum….thank you. I truly appreciate it. If you have any further questions, do not hesitate to ask. G. Merker

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what happened with the spelling was my fault...when i hit the spell check buttom it changed the spelling sorry about that and thanks for the warning i didn't want to take a chance after seeing that post....:gj:

Thanks for the responses again...Jeff....I had not one necropsy performed, but THREE....I also ran cultures on the gut contents and lung contents of one animal....you are correct...I can't really point the blame 100% positively on Cell-Sorb Plus®; however, I am almost certain it had something to do with the demise of 13 animals. The necropsies pointed towards something going on with the animals in terms of micro abrasions on the skin. One vet surmised that this allowed bacteria to invade the animal.

My point is if you run across this substrate, you may want to think twice about using it with medium-sized snakes.

Has anyone tried contacting Greg Graziani about this? I think it was last year that he made a post about it saying that he was using it exclusively in his facility. I'd be curious if he's run into any problems keeping hundreds of ball pythons on it.