Illness/Sickness: Major problem with young Aneides lugubris

[cland]

Hello,

I have two very young CB Aneides lugubris, about one inch and a half each, if that. I have had them for several months now, and they have grown considerably since I received them. I fed them first on flightless drosophila, but they have graduated to pinheads and slightly larger. They live together in a small plastic container with a moist layer of reptibark and some climbing/hiding materials. I mist them with Poland Spring, and feed them about one a week with several crickets. Recently, I noticed that one appeared to be getting a bit portly, while the other was getting slightly thinner. It seems as though the fatter one was better at catching the crickets, so I separated them to feed the thinner one. That was about two weeks ago. The fatter one has not appreciably thinned since, and I noticed that it was having a bit of trouble moving around about a week ago; he flipped over accidentally while I was cleaning the container, and couldn't right himself, so I helped. I was away for the weekend, and when I got back to check on the little ones, I saw that while the thinner one was fine and acting normally, the fatter one was acting very strangely. It was dragging itself around by its front legs only, with the back legs splayed out and not moving. The tail was rapidly spinning and flipping about, and it just made me sick to see the little guy struggling so much. Its belly is still looking distended, and I have no idea what to do, if I can do anything, or how I may have caused the problem. Could it be the result of some kind of impaction? I changed out the reptibark and cleaned the container, and will keep an eye on it, but I don't know what else I can do. Has anyone else seen symptoms similar to this? I hope that it wasn't through irresponsible feeding that I allowed this to happen, but I really just hope that the little guy can recover from it. Any ideas?

Thanks for any help you all might be able to provide.

Best,
Mike

 

[Jennewt]

It sounds like the end of the line for this little one. Sorry The setup and feeding sounds right. Maybe too warm?

 

[cland]

The little one did end up dying some days ago. I was amazed it made it as long as it did in that condition. It had been warmer recently, but it started showing symptoms before the temperature went up. I was worried about my other salamanders, so I actually brought them to my mother's house (thanks mom!), who has a cool basement and is currently taking care of them (she really likes them; the tiger will follow her around in its cage--they are really quite engaging). Anyway, too bad it couldn't be helped, but thanks for responding anyway.

Best,
Mike