This is no thread to ask for help but a story of a mysterious illness in my Triturus captive breds.
I underline here that asking a specialised vet is best choice in most cases to avoid torture for the newts by experiments with wrong medicine.
I have a small group of T. karelini and bred them last year.
I keep the adults and metamorphed juvies terrestrial in a setup as for Salamandra: garden soil, moss and bark pieces, slightly damp in one half, more dry in the other. A drinking/bathing bowl is also part of the terrarium.
During late autumn I observed one individual of my juvie cb group nearly unable to move and looking dry. It was sitting not hidden on the moss. It died after 3 days. No visible open or wet parts of skin, no change in colour of skin, just looking quite normal.
It was one of the smaller animals and I did not take care so much for the reason.
Then in beginning of February I had 2 more cases of this strange illness and send them to a specialized vet (exomed, Berlin) for investigation. It turned out that my cb group got a fungus called Hormodendrum that is facultatively causing problems in amphibians. This fungus is normally a saprophyte (eating dead material).
The investigation of the 2 freshly dead newts brought a mykosis of skin and liver and partly destroyed intestines.
The recommendation of vet was Itrafungol.
I put the newts in shallow water and added the medicine, possible is spraying it on the terrestrial animals as well.
I still keep them in the treated water with small island to hide and no other newt died so far. I have to clean the infested boxes but maybe have to ask myself as well, why a fungus present in environment (moss, bark, soil) got able to cause illness. I will enrich the died of the newts to boost the immune system of them. They were fed until now with dusted small crickets. In the same way I raised many salamanders and newts until no without problems.
I underline here that asking a specialised vet is best choice in most cases to avoid torture for the newts by experiments with wrong medicine.
I have a small group of T. karelini and bred them last year.
I keep the adults and metamorphed juvies terrestrial in a setup as for Salamandra: garden soil, moss and bark pieces, slightly damp in one half, more dry in the other. A drinking/bathing bowl is also part of the terrarium.
During late autumn I observed one individual of my juvie cb group nearly unable to move and looking dry. It was sitting not hidden on the moss. It died after 3 days. No visible open or wet parts of skin, no change in colour of skin, just looking quite normal.
It was one of the smaller animals and I did not take care so much for the reason.
Then in beginning of February I had 2 more cases of this strange illness and send them to a specialized vet (exomed, Berlin) for investigation. It turned out that my cb group got a fungus called Hormodendrum that is facultatively causing problems in amphibians. This fungus is normally a saprophyte (eating dead material).
The investigation of the 2 freshly dead newts brought a mykosis of skin and liver and partly destroyed intestines.
The recommendation of vet was Itrafungol.
I put the newts in shallow water and added the medicine, possible is spraying it on the terrestrial animals as well.
I still keep them in the treated water with small island to hide and no other newt died so far. I have to clean the infested boxes but maybe have to ask myself as well, why a fungus present in environment (moss, bark, soil) got able to cause illness. I will enrich the died of the newts to boost the immune system of them. They were fed until now with dusted small crickets. In the same way I raised many salamanders and newts until no without problems.