Noto. viridescens disease paranoia

[patrick]

I feel pretty paranoid asking this, but i can't help being concerned for my newts. I have three Notos who I got from Ward's. I recently heard that these online suppliers can have chytrid fungus infected newts. I have looked online to try and see what it would look like, but all I see are examples in frogs. Can anyone tell me what it would look like in Notos?

Out of the three, two are really fat and healthy looking, one occasionally looks bloated after I feed him, but I'm sure it is just me being paranoid again. The third one however is small, and skinny. it fattens up when I feed it, but there are two things which concern me and I have kept under observation about it. One, it has a dark spot about the size of one of the red spots on its back, it is slightly raised and looks like the newt equivalent of a mole. I have kept it under observation since I got the newts and it doesn't appear to be changing at all. Two, the left eye of the newt is not normal. normally they have a horizontal dark line down their eye, but his left eye is speckled gold an black and really just looks messed up if you look at it closely. I am not sure if this is a problem or could just be a birth defect in a newt who if he were a puppy would be the runt of the litter.

Do these things alarm anyone? Should I quarantine this guy? or just keep it under observation. Let me know, thanks.

 

[edward]

You can get a PCR test run on the newts to determine if they have chytrid. The infection can remain asymptomatic for periods of time.

Ed