Help! I'm worried about my classroom pet.

[Teacher]

Hello,
I just found this forum and I'm hoping to get some help from some fellow BT Skink owners. I'm worried about my Indonesian Blue Tongued Skink, Logan. I've had him for about 5 years. Logan is in a large glass aquarium with under the tank heating, carpet, UVB light, and house. He has ALWAYS been very healthy. He was and continues to be a super eater (fruits, crickets, eggs, occassional hamburger, chicken, or a pinkie.) In January he developed a reddish cast to his underbelly, and feet, and had a very small amout of crusting around one eye. I took him to a vet, but found him to be very unknowledgable. I did, however follow his advice, by bathing him in a blue solution, and applying a perscription cream to his feet. I did this for about 10 days. The redness continued and the eyes didn't really change. The condition however, has now worstened. Logan's eyes were crusted shut yesterday. With a warm cloth I was able to wipe his eyes to allow him to open them, but they were shut again today. They are also very red around the edges. There is no seepage from his nose or mouth, nor is he coughing or sneezing. He continues to have a huge appetite. His last shed was not the best. I've been helping him with warm wet paper towels, and baths to loosen the skin. I thought maybe his shed was the cause of the eye problem. I also thought his overall reddish color on his feet, and belly was due to maybe sexual maturity. My 5 1/2 foot iguana got a reddish cast to him when he became sexually mature. Anybody out there have any ideas? Is there anything I should be wiping his eyes with. My reptiles are always so heathy. I've never had problems before.

[Fatal_S]

The color change could be attributed to regular changes with age. The eye could be stuck shed as well. However this also sounds like a possible infection.

First thing to help is pictures. The more pictures, and better detail, the more likely someone on this forum will recognize it and be able to help.

I'd start by using a wet cloth on his eye, and see if you can gently wipe away anything stuck there. Keep him warm (don't turn off his heat at night).

More members will be here soon, recommending treatment, vet options, and more. Good luck with your Bluey, and welcome to the foum.

[Teacher]

Thank you Fatal. I'll snap some digital pics. I'm not quite sure how to get them on this forum, but I'll figure it out.

My last BT Skink never had a bad shed. He NEVER got sick either. I had him for about 10 years, then one morning. He was dead. He was an adult when I got him, so I'm not sure of his actual age.

My current, Logan (acutally Logan II), was purchased as a youngster from a pet store which knew nothing about him. He was malnurished and on a sand substrate which he licked each time he tried to eat food. He had no water. It was awful. I made a deal with the pet store owner and saved him. That was about 5 years ago. Logan grew friendly (at first he only huffed and puffed at me!) and has become very personable. My class just loves to watch him eat. When they are in the room he hangs out in view, crawling over his log or just staring out at them showing off his tongue. When they head for home, Logan crawls in his house, ready to end the day. It's so cute!

I really think Logan might need some eye drops, but I don't have a reliable exotic vet to prescribe them.

[Fatal_S]

Once you get the pictures onto your computer, click UploadPic in the reply page. You can upload the picture and resize it if needed.

[Raven_Vivi]

Hello~

Like fatal said, pics will help.

my first guess was going to be stuck shed as well ^_^

Not sure about the reddish cast, might want to wait for the experts.

Can you tell us the temps in the terrarium??~

And you should really try to search out a good exotics vet just in case it gets VERY serious.
http://www.herpvetconnection.com/

There's a lot of listing of herp vets on this site. It was a godsend for me! ^_^

[Herptiles.net]

Logan's best bet is to see an experienced reptile vet ASAP. The longer you wait with reptiles, the worse things get, the less of a chance there is for recovery, and the bigger the bill will be. Reptiles are incredibly talented at hiding their illnesses, so even if Logan feels terrible right now he's probably hiding it!

Check www.arav.org as well as Herp Vet Connection for a local vet.

I might suspect that the redness could be a skin infection, or a manifestation of septicemia (bacterial infection in the blood). Either way, it needs to be treated. A skin infection of that size won't go away on it's own, and septicemia can be life-threatening, but septicemic animals are typically depressed and lethargic so it's probably not the case here.

Eye infections can get nasty, keep up with the daily gentle cleansing with warm water.

For now, change his substrate to paper towels for easy cleaning and monitoring. You will be able to see any odd discharge or exudate much more easily on the paper towels, and if it is a skin infection we're dealing with, cleanliness is extremely important so they need to be changed almost daily. Carpeting is a very good option, but we don't know if there are any nasty bacteria hiding away in it that might be aggravating the skin condition. It also struck me that perhaps the carpeting is abrasive, and is causing trauma to the belly and feet? Can you post a pic of the carpeting?

What are his enclosure temperatures? Offering him a slightly warmer basking spot (by 2-4 degrees Celsius) can help boost his immune system, just make sure he can retreat to a cooler area at the lower end of their preferred temperature range (20-25 C, something like room temperature). A reptile's immune system is dependent on the animal's ability to reach its preferred body temperature, and some herps will seek out a "behavioural fever" in warmer temperatures when ill to help combat a sickness.

How's Logan's poop? You can tell a lot about the animal's general condition from his droppings Is it nicely formed? The bulk should be a brown-black "log" (the feces) with a small yellowish-white blob (the urates), and a varying amount of clear urine. I have an article on my site on evaluating herp poop (not trying to draw extraneous attention to my site, only so that I don't have to re-type and copy/paste and re-post photos on here): http://herptiles.consulnetjdm.dyndns.org:8081/poop.html
It's slightly dated, I'm doing a big overhaul on my site articles, but the core info is there.

When you do get to see a good herp vet, don't clean Logan's eyes the day that you take him in. Vets want to see the full problem, not half of it. We get this all the time at my clinic... the owner describes a nasty ear infection, or other problem, on the phone while making the appointment, but then they clean it up all nice before bringing the pet in, and we have only half of the "evidence" to work with!

There's only so much we can do on a forum, diagnosing an illness is not possible over the Internet. But we will do our best to give you some good advice for the next steps.

[Reptilestop]

I had a similar problem with my young bluey, but he also got sores around his mouth and his eyes were sealed shut every day. It took me awhile to figure out but I finally started spraying him a lot and bathing him and he just shed it all away one day. Sometimes the problem reoccurs when he gets dry, I had to take him off of aspen because of it. He's fine now though, wierd huh?

[Fatal_S]

Alright, I got permission from Lucifer_Spades (can't get online right now) to post a picture from her BTS rescue, Quinn. Quinn had septicemia, and couldn't fight the infection, sadly dying.

Look to see if the redness is like a ring around the scale. This is what Luce described Quinn's condtion to look like.

Picture will follow from me or Luce as I cannot upload pictures right now? Look for the ring of red around the scales.

[sheslikeheroin]

if it is an eye infection a vet likely prescribe a medication such as gentomicin (a reptile safe anti- biotioc eye drop). Check out the herp vet connection site as it will have a list of dependable vets. also it would really help to post your location. we have members from all over the world and odds are someone lives near you and can reccomend a good nearby vet. good luck with your skink and upload pics when you can. make sure theyre taken in a internet friendly resolution, I found out the hardway when i took 150 pictures of my skink and they were all to big to upload. if you have any questions about how to upload pics just ask. I would also reccomend looking at posts of quinn the latest one shows a good example of what septecimia looks like. also take a peak at the sites care sheet there may be some good info in there. i hope this helps! good luck with logan!

[Lucifer_Spades]

I had a couple people ask me for pictures of Quinns body to see what i meant by the red ringing of the scales. This one is of the underside of his head as the lighter scales there show the problem very clearly and while it is the least graphic it will still be very graphic to some people so:


*****GRAPHIC PICTURE WARNING****






























With this picture you can clearly see the red edging to the pinkish scale. the flushing is a classic sypmtom of Septicemia (Blood poisoning) and is from an infection getting into the blood stream.
In Quinns case it began with some slight redness about the lip wounds and within 10 hours had spread down the entire body. And while not every case will spread so fast, if you see anything that looks similar take your bluey to an emergency vet.

Though it is relatively rare in an otherwise healthy animal, all wounds should be watched closely. This can be caused by any type of wound a breeding bite, a scrape from a rock, even a toenail cut too short and there may not be any signs of infection other than the slight reddness at first. I wish now that I had taken pictures when Quinn first showed the first signs to help show how mild it can look at first.

[SailleSkinklover]

And one thing: make sure you keep him on paper towel (which you will likely need to change daily or more depending) to keep his enclosure as clean as possible. And in my opinion, I would leave him on the paper towels untl he gets an absolutely clean bill of healthy from the vet.

Luce had the unfortunate situation of Quinn's septicemia getting bad after she had put him on another substrate, I think it was paper pellets? I'm not saying that this is what caused the issue, but it probably didn't help.
She had certainly done an amazing job and Quinn was visibly getting so much better, and then she made the switch and it seemed to go down hill so rapidly.
As I said, there is no proof, only my theory that perhaps the new substrate had chemicals or something that aggrevated Quinn's condition, but I think it wise to eliminate the potental for the problem altogether by just keeping Logan on either unprinted newspaper or paper towels until healthy.

Good luck with Logan!

[Herptiles.net]

Stress and exhaustion are big factors. Herp immune systems decrease in function as a result of stress, which can allow a very small number of pathogens (like some bacteria that enter the blood from an otherwise "harmless" wound) to take advantage and cause a serious problem.

Think about when you catch a cold or the flu... it often happens after you've been missing sleep, working more or are generally stressed out. This happens with herps, too. If an animal is recovering from an illness, its immune system is already working hard, and the immune system is your first bodily function to take a hit when you are exhausted because it's so energetically expensive to keep going.

Many pathogens (disease-causing organisms) are opportunistic- meaning they do not usually cause any health problems because they are kept to manageable numbers by the immune system, but if the animal's immunity takes a dive they take advantage and cause problems.

[Teacher]

Thank you all for the ideas. I took many pictures. They show quite a bit. In fact seeing them on my computer as large as they are, I'm even more sure this problem occured because of a rough shed. I'm having great difficulty placing the pictures on this post. The pics are on my computer. I've hit upload picture and I got a box which allowed me to choose a file. I chose the correct picture and hit send but it didn't work. I really want you all to see his poor little eyes. It is definitely not respiratory related. It is from the shed, I'm sure. I'm afraid of an infection.

[Kymbadina]

After send, you have to hit instert picture and add another..I had that same problem.

[Teacher]

I was just reading over the comments again.

Thank you Raven for the vet suggestion. I found one about 1/2 hour away. I will make an appointment tomorrow.

Tenderfoot. I have lined his environment with paper towel. I thought that was a great idea. The carpet is acutally pretty soft for indoor/outdoor carpet. I used to always keep reptibark on one side of the carpet for him, but it was hard for him to grab crickets. He kept grabbing bark! His feces is normal. Interesting website. Very valuable information. I will continue to watch for problems in that area. I will definitely not wash his eyes before our appointment, though to be truthful, I would have, had you told me not to. I would not want Logan to look neglected, which is why I would have washed them, not thinking that I was removing something he/she would need to see.

Fatel and Lucifer. How sad! I'm thankful that Logan's scales are not ringed like the picture. There more like a pinkish cast to the whole underbelly. The scales are not outlined in any way.


Thank you again for the suggestions. Anyone out there have a Mac. My husband thinks that is why I'm having trouble with the pictures.

[sheslikeheroin]

fatal uses a mac! but likely your picture issue is you just have to wait anywhere from 20 seconds to 2 mins to upload a pic (depending on the speed of you internet connection). also files that are taken by a digital camera are often to large. you usually need to either resize them or take them in a setting that uses smaller file sizes.

[Scotts1au]

Ask the vet if it could be cellulitis. If it is you will need broad spec antibiotics.

Scott

[Richard.C]

i agree,a reptile vet is your best bet,i unfortunatly lost my young centralian bluetongue a while back,i had moved it in with my juvie western blueys and shingle backs and they all caught a respitory infection that the centralian had from its other cage,the centralian went down hill fast and died before i even thought vet,but luckily i got the westerns and shingles to the vet asap and treated,there now back to there usual selves,also im not sure about indo blueys but eastern blueys can suddenly develop a pinkish hue to there underside as they get older,but yes i highly recommend u get to a vet asap,then u will know whats happening,i dont think a stuck shed would cause the eye probs u describe,or the pinkish hue,good luck and let us know what the vet says,as its always valuble to know such details on sites like this

[blueyophile]

Agree that on the Eastern BTS at least the reddish hue developing on the underbelly can be quite harmless. Our Bluey is quite pink at times (more noticeable leading up to shed).

[Teacher]

Great news. javascript:emoticon(':D') The vet was WONDRFUL! Much better than the local one I visited a couple of months ago. Logan's eyes looked a bit better today, in spite of the fact that I purposefully did not wash them. The doctor feels the eye problem is probably stuck shed. The health of the eyes is perfect. She also told me there was no infection (yipee!) but was worried that one could develop if we did not treat.

We are to continue with the soaks and apply Neo-Poly-Bac to his eyes daily. I picked up the perscription at the office. She applied the ointment while I was there and he is already looking better. She felt the pinkish cast was also normal, and agreed that he is probably becoming sexually mature.

Although this vet quite used to exotics and handled Logan very well, the rest of the office was buzzing about my little friend. She took him from me to weigh him and after she left (closing the door behind her) I heard ooooooos and awwwws from the employees there. "Wow! Did you see that Skink!" "Take a look at him!" It was so funny to hear everyone flipping over Logan. I inquired about the excitement when she returned. Apparently they don't see a lot of skinks. Visiting reptiles there are usually turtles, snakes, iguanas, and geckos. When they do get a skink, it is never a robust as Logan. He weighed in at just under 1 pound! She mentioned how well he behaved when held and said she could tell he was used to it. He was quite active on the table though!

Well, $71.00 later and Logan is on the road to recovery. javascript:emoticon(':ohyes:') I will still continue to get the pictures on for you all to see. His eyes really did look terrible![img][/img]