RI? How? Why? seriously confused

[BFE Pets]

I know this topic is on here and I've read every thread I could find on RI's and I'm not trying to treat it myself. I've battled them before and lost a beautiful bee to it even with antibiotics and vet visits. I don't understand how they got it. I've got two males (my cinnamon and het pied) neither was used for breeding this year (cinnamon was to small and het pied female wasnt up to weight yet) They were in the same rack one above the other (counting top to bottom slots 6 and 7 out of 10). The cinnamon is still eating weekly but not as aggressively as he used to. and the het pied hasn't eaten in about 2 months I wrote this off as I had females nearby producing follicals. I am almost ocd with my cleaning. I use hand sanitizer between every animal. deep cleaning: I swap out 5 tubs every wednesday. 10% bleach water, spray, scrub, rinse with hot water, dry, spray with lysol, let sit 24hrs, wash with dawn and water, dry and sit until the following wednesday.
Spot cleaning: Spray with vinegar based multisurface cleaner, wipe clean, dry with paper towel, wipe spot with rubbing alchol let air dry for 10min while I give it (bp) a quick wipe down with a wet warm paper towel and just enjoy holding my pet. My leopard geckos are in a different room as are my breeder rats and mice. The humidity is always between 55% and 65% the hot spot is 90 - 92 cool end has never droped below 79 ambient air temp is near 83 -\+ 2 my husbandry is spot on to the best of my knowledge. if not please speak up. so I really dont understand how they are showing signs of an RI. I have a strict qt proceedure and havent introduced any new animals into the room that they were in since october of 2011. None of the others in that rack or others are showing any signs. I just dont understand how They could have contracted an RI. they havent been rearranged or stressed more than regular cleaning, feeding, and the occasional holding while waiting for tubs to dry. Please if anyone can enlighten me please do so. I have a vet appointment tomorrow afternoon. getting throat cultures and antibotics planned. The two in question have been moved to a closet for qt. as I don't want to put them in my qt room and run the risk of infecting the ones that are nearly ready to go into the main collection. IDK if there's a real question in this thread but just had to vent. I just don't understand how these things happen. Guess thats the Q. How does this happen with all the precautions I take and how is it just these two males are ill and the rest are fine? I'll let you all know when I get the cultures back and what antibiotics the vet prescribes. Thanks all

[kitedemon]

There is a relation between ventilation and RI. Low ventilation and high humidity with ambient temps appropriate for royals is a perfect breeding ground for bacteria, fungus. Both of which can cause RI. With optimal breeding conditions the bacteria levels can be higher than normal, increasing the chances.

What is you ventilation like? I test mine by using a paper substrate and keeping the RH at 60% than removing the water bowl and timing how long it take to drop to room RH. I don't like seeing over one hour. Most of mine change in 20 min of less.

[kitedemon]

http://ball-pythons.net/forums/showt...ons-The-Basics

[BFE Pets]

There is a relation between ventilation and RI. Low ventilation and high humidity with ambient temps appropriate for royals is a perfect breeding ground for bacteria, fungus. Both of which can cause RI. With optimal breeding conditions the bacteria levels can be higher than normal, increasing the chances.

What is you ventilation like? I test mine by using a paper substrate and keeping the RH at 60% than removing the water bowl and timing how long it take to drop to room RH. I don't like seeing over one hour. Most of mine change in 20 min of less.

Thank you. I had previously read the post you linked and wasnt sure exactly how to test ventilation. I will test ventilation in a little bit. I do have vent holes in my tubs but just a few. after testing I will add more if necessary. My 41qt racks also have a 1\8 inch gap between the shelf and top of tub. hatchling tubs fit snug but havent seen any issues within the hatchlings ever.

[BFE Pets]

My vet called and got me in earlier this morning due to a cancelation. $49 office visit for both my boys. $20 each for injections of Convenia (long acting broad spectrum anitbotics for bacterial) $79 for both cultures. Now we wait for them to come back from the lab in 3 days. One of the questions he always asked is: "when was the last time they ate?" not a big deal. Now he is not a specialized reptile vet but is very knowledgeable and loves them. He seemed very concerned that my het pied hasnt eaten in 3 months. I find it very normal for this time of the year as i assume that most of you do also. He has lost 50 grams and still looks very healthy in the body weight department. He wanted to give him a vitamin injection to stimulate his appetite. does anyone have any knowledge of such actions? I declined them for now and wanted to wait for the lab results and to ask you all your thoughts on that part. I've got to go back in 3 days to get the results and can always get the vitamin injection then. but I just dont see any reason to "jump start" his feeding right now. How does it work any way?

[The Serpent Merchant]

People get sick from time to time despite their best intentions to stay healthy.

If your temps/humidity/ventilation are all good then I wouldn't worry too much.

[The Serpent Merchant]

Vitamin injections? No

[versicolor]

I could be totally wrong here, but sometimes I think that it's possible to be too fussy about all of this stuff. As in sometimes, (and believe me I am guilty of it myself), people take the cleaning and adjusting temps and humidity and just generally fussing about the overall ball python housing and environment so much that it ends up becoming more detrimental to the snake than helpful. We all try so hard to get everything "perfect" for the snake when maybe at some point we need to simply not be so anal about it, get things to what would be considered a comfortable and nominally healthy state, and just let things be.

A good example is when both me and my dad had fish tanks at the same time. I was absolutely obsessive about keeping the water perfect and doing everything by the book etc. My dad did nothing. Seriously he did no water tests. no cleaning. heck he didn't even hardly ever change the filters, he just let the thing do whatever. And while I struggled to keep everything perfect I also struggled to keep any fish alive for more than a couple of weeks, and he never lost one fish. He had that tank for years and the fish grew huge and were just about the healthiest fish I had ever seen, if I could actually see them through the muck.

Anyways, before everyone jumps to conclusions and assumes i'm out of my mind and giving bad advice, i'm in no way suggesting to not make every attempt to have the proper set-up for our snakes, i'm just saying that maybe we go overboard sometimes and get so carried away with trying to get things "perfect", that it might be doing more harm than good. Just a thought.

[satomi325]

I've heard of vitamin injections from a companion animal vet. But I've never had a specialized reptile vet offer it to me when a rescue I took in had RI.

I would keep declining. If your snake ever got to the point of emaciation, then I would suggest tube feeding, which is safer than assist feeding.

I could be totally wrong here, but sometimes I think that it's possible to be too fussy about all of this stuff. As in sometimes, (and believe me I am guilty of it myself), people take the cleaning and adjusting temps and humidity and just generally fussing about the overall ball python housing and environment so much that it ends up becoming more detrimental to the snake than helpful. We all try so hard to get everything "perfect" for the snake when maybe at some point we need to simply not be so anal about it, get things to what would be considered a comfortable and nominally healthy state, and just let things be.

A good example is when both me and my dad had fish tanks at the same time. I was absolutely obsessive about keeping the water perfect and doing everything by the book etc. My dad did nothing. Seriously he did no water tests. no cleaning. heck he didn't even hardly ever change the filters, he just let the thing do whatever. And while I struggled to keep everything perfect I also struggled to keep any fish alive for more than a couple of weeks, and he never lost one fish. He had that tank for years and the fish grew huge and were just about the healthiest fish I had ever seen, if I could actually see them through the muck.

Anyways, before everyone jumps to conclusions and assumes i'm out of my mind and giving bad advice, i'm in no way suggesting to not make every attempt to have the proper set-up for our snakes, i'm just saying that maybe we go overboard sometimes and get so carried away with trying to get things "perfect", that it might be doing more harm than good. Just a thought.

I think ball pythons are pretty hardy animals. I believe they can do well in a stable range of reasonable temps and humidity. However, I still think we should give them stable optimum conditions. Some snakes change their habits from the smallest change in temp or whatever else. For example, many of my hatchlings won't feed above 88-89 degrees. Anything above or below and they stop feeding.

And added stress on a snake increases the chance of RI. Their immune system is lowered and directly related to their stress. So leaving conditions to stray away from ideal usually does stress out a snake. Especially if it fluctuates a lot.

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[rabernet]

I could be totally wrong here, but sometimes I think that it's possible to be too fussy about all of this stuff. As in sometimes, (and believe me I am guilty of it myself), people take the cleaning and adjusting temps and humidity and just generally fussing about the overall ball python housing and environment so much that it ends up becoming more detrimental to the snake than helpful. We all try so hard to get everything "perfect" for the snake when maybe at some point we need to simply not be so anal about it, get things to what would be considered a comfortable and nominally healthy state, and just let things be.

A good example is when both me and my dad had fish tanks at the same time. I was absolutely obsessive about keeping the water perfect and doing everything by the book etc. My dad did nothing. Seriously he did no water tests. no cleaning. heck he didn't even hardly ever change the filters, he just let the thing do whatever. And while I struggled to keep everything perfect I also struggled to keep any fish alive for more than a couple of weeks, and he never lost one fish. He had that tank for years and the fish grew huge and were just about the healthiest fish I had ever seen, if I could actually see them through the muck.

Anyways, before everyone jumps to conclusions and assumes i'm out of my mind and giving bad advice, i'm in no way suggesting to not make every attempt to have the proper set-up for our snakes, i'm just saying that maybe we go overboard sometimes and get so carried away with trying to get things "perfect", that it might be doing more harm than good. Just a thought.

I agree completely. I used to be anal about my cleaning etc, now I'm much more relaxed about it. Other than feeding and cleaning, I'm not in the snake room fiddling around with things. Knock wood - in seven years of keeping a respectable number of ball pythons, I've not personally ever had an RI (I've probably just jinxed myself).