|
Thank you, and yeah, that's what the vet told me. It likely could've been from all the way back when I bought her from the pet store - given how I don't own any reptiles and I haven't let her outside or let any outdoor reptiles in, I don't know how else she could've gotten it.
And I'm having the exact same worries planning for my future reptiles. I'll have to either verify the health history of any hatchlings I buy or take them in for an expensive test. I'm not sure if the test that the vet is doing on Peppermint's fecal sample is the DNA test or the oocyst test - if its not the DNA test then I'll be even more lost because I just can't handle the possibility of having another reptile with crypto and I'll do everything to ensure that they don't. Plus I'd like to own multiple reptiles in the future, and this would be a lot harder on me if I had two infected snakes than if I had the hamster and now-deceased snake that I have now. (The only good thing about crypto is that mammals can't catch reptilian-based crypto, and vice-versa) I don't know how many of the same species I'll keep and I'm not sure how well the respective types of crypto affect the other species (like, a gecko's crypto vs a snake's crypto) but I don't want to take any chances. I'm not planning on cohabitation unless it's something well-documented and I have the resources to ensure that there's as little risk as possible (like garter snake cohabitation, for example - excluding the cannibalistic ones anyways) but because I'm just a pet owner I don't have the most professional setups. I share tools, I forget to wash my hands before touching, I let them crawl around my house, ect - obviously if an animal is clearly sick, I'd take more care, but because crypto is such a silent killer I'd never know if I was spreading it. I'll probably quarantine until I get my new reptiles into the vets to take as many tests as they can (within reason and without hurting the animal, of course) and if/when everything comes back negative I'll start treating them like a pet, but it's still just really scary. Considering how long Peppermint fought off the crypto (she was perfectly fine for the first year and a half of her life, she only started having problems in like spring of this year) it takes a long, long time to wear down an otherwise healthy and strong animal. Which makes me sad, because likely, had the pet store and/or her breeder taken proper care of their animals, she would have had a long, happy, and fulfilling life.
That's good to know because we were planning to use bleach and I had no idea it didn't work, so thank you! I don't know how easy to acquire ammonia is so im not sure if we'll be able to use that, but I'll ask and also make sure we use something more thorough than bleach.
|