SNAKE HAS LUMP! HELP

[jessicashallperish]

My yearling candy cane regurged his last meal. i didnt really think much of it, this was about 9 days ago. skipped his feeding.. but i didnt examine him. i figured he was about to shed or something. i was cleaning tubs today and was looking him over. he has a lump. about the place a meal should be at if he had just eaten, its about the size of a pinky head, isnt hard, and you can see it when you hold him up like kind of candling him. he's about to pass a BM, which i can also see in his bowels. he has just taken a huge drink before i looked at him... but this kind of worries me, especially since he regurged. he always eats and passes poo just fine.. what could it be? i really dont want to lose the little guy. i can take a picture of it if need be.. is he impacted? what do i do?! i dont really have any extra money to take him to a vet..

[tommyhuck]

Could it possibly be a fat lump?

[jessicashallperish]

its in his stomach, i just read that swollen looking stomachs may mean crypto so i moved him to a room with no other reptiles and im running all my tubs through the dish washer on with a heated steam wash

[crotalis40741]

I would take it to the vet and have them do a gastric lavage and have the samples Pcr tested for crypto to be safe. Also after handling him wash your hands with an ammonia solution because if it is crypto you will spread it to the rest of your animals if you do not take extra precautions. I would also suggest disposable rubber gloves. Do you have a pic of the animal and the area on it?

[jessicashallperish]

everything has been ran through the dish washer with bleach. im using gloves to handle him and im getting photos now

[crotalis40741]

everything has been ran through the dish washer with bleach. im using gloves to handle him and im getting photos now


Bleach I was informed doesn't harm crypto. The little beasties are about nuclear proof. Heat can kill it. Best of luck with it.

[jessicashallperish]

weird... its barely noticeable now. like the more i handled him the less i could see it. it wasnt huge to start with and now i cant see the coloration i saw before. i feel like i may have over reacted.. since he did infact take a LONG drink before i noticed it.. maybe it was his tummy being full of water... still taking extreme precaution and may take him to the vet. im going to wait for him to poop and then feed him a pinky head

[jessicashallperish]

my dish washer washes with like EXTREME heat and steam, like so hot you cant touch dishes afterwards. soo if there was something alive, its not longer.

[jessicashallperish]

its not longer... LOL it is no longer

[crotalis40741]

I had a friend that got some snakes in, had them for a while when he noticed a lump on the stomach of one. Then it would kinda go away and then come back. Snake was diagnosed with crypto a couple weeks after the lump reappeared for the second time.

[jessicashallperish]

the thing is, this lump was tiny. like not even his whole stomach. it was just a little distended. im going to keep EXTREMELY close eye on him

[jessicashallperish]

i called my vet and im going to bring them a stool sample on monday.

[tommyhuck]

From what I've read you may have to take the snake to the vet more than once to find out for sure if it's crypto. Hopefully it was just a belly full of water. That would be the best outcome.

[jessicashallperish]

honestly, thats what im thinking. but he will remain in QT for a few months. i just really hope it isnt crypto.. i have a large collection. :|

[tommyhuck]

keep an eye on him and hopefully it works out. Keep us updated as well.

[jessicashallperish]

i def. will. boiled all my feeding utensils and water dishes.

[Nanci]

The acid fast test requires three negatives for you to have a reasonable expectation that your snake doesn't have crypto. The PCR test looks for DNA and is able to detect it in a single test.

[SnakeAround]

I have a few cases of babies with a pinky head sized, hardly squishable lump after the pinky should have been digested. The lumps just dissappeared like in two days. To me it seemed like a pinky skull got left behind for a while to be passed on a little later... probably nonsense but it just seemed like that.