Red leg in the enclosure-what to do next????

[morg]

Yesterday I found a very ill looking newt in my outdoor enclosure.
Rather than hiding away she was out in the open looking listless and dull coloured.
After removing her I could see that her skin had gone rubbery, her eyes looked dead, and that her underside was a horrible red colour.
I took pics and contacted a few people who advised me that the newt had red leg, and offered advice on possible treatments[Thanks guys].
I then spent a lot of the day researching the subject online, but am still stumped as to what I should do with the enclosure.
All the land based newts spend most of their time together either under logs, bricks, or in the colder weather underground.
I cannot get to these underground newts as it would mean carefully dismantling the whole set up, which could cause a collapse of the underground area.
Now my questions.
Firstly, in the pond section of the enclosure are a male and a female who show no signs of any infection.
Should I remove these into a tank until I can be sure that there are no more problems in the enclosure?[keeping well away from my other indoor amphibians].
Secondly should the worst come to the worst, and this disease wipe out all the newts in there, what could I do to make the enclosure safe to use again?
Would I need to remove everything, right down to the foundations, bring in new rubble, pipes, soil etc.
Sorry this post has been so long.

 

[edward]

Hi Morg,
Redled is typically caused by bacteria in the Aeromonad or Pseudomonad family. These bacteria are ubiquitous in the enviroment as a part of the normal bacterial flora and fauna and normally live in the soil or wet enviroments. These bacteria typically infect animals that are stressed in some fashion and is most commonly associated with crowded and/or unhygenic conditions (although not all of the time). But any stressor such as hibernation, or reproductive stress can allow an animal to become infected. It can have a very rapid onset leading to death (sometimes as short as 48 hours; personal observation). Also the "classic symptom" of the red coloration on the ventral side may not show until the animal is too far gone to save so any of the newts that begin showing any symptoms may need to be treated.

Infectivity can depend on the strain and other animals in the exhibit may or may not become infected.
If it wipes out all other newts in the enclosure, then the strain may be very infectious and the enclousure may need to be totally torn down before placing anymore amphibians in the enclosure. But in general as these bacteria are part of the normal bacteria flora in our set-ups there is no practical way to avoid exposing your animals to these bacteria.

If you still have the dead newt getting the newt necropsied and the strain of bacteria tested for sensitivity as MDR is common in this group of bacteria (at work we recently had to use a newer antibiotic as the strain that infected an Atelopus zeteki was resistant to the more common drugs of choice.) This way you should be able to have an effective antibiotic on hand if any more newts show symptoms.

Hope this helps.
Ed

 

[morg]

Ed
Thank you for your reply and advice.
I did not keep the dead newt, so cannot have a test done on her.
I still have not seen anymore of the land based newts above ground.
The newt I removed was up and about, brightly coloured and eating waxworms I dropped into the enclosure, just a few days before I saw in the bad state, so theres a possibility that the others have become infected underground, and will not be seen again.

The two in the water are both fine and healthy looking as yet.

All of the newts in the enclosure were out of hibernation very early Feb when we had a warm spell, but then we had a week of freezing weather which sent them back underground.
The aquatic ones however, stayed in the pond section through the cold weather.

 

[edward]

Hi Morg,
As a guess it sounds like thermal stress may have contributed to the infection. The sudden low temps may have stressed the animal ontop of hibernation which is always a stress to the animal.
It is possible that others are/will be infected but as they are back underground where the temps are more stable I think they will be fine.
Just keep a close watch on them for the next 2-3 weeks.
Ed

 

[morg]

Well my worst fears have come to be, and now all newts in the enclosure have died from the disease.
There is one newt not accounted for, but I expect that he is probably dead underground.

To be safe, I will be removing everything from the enclosure, plants, wood soil etc, and bringing in more from elsewhere before deciding what to do next.

Any body got ideas as to what can be done while reconstructing to try to avoid these problems in the future?

 

[john]

Hi Morg,

Sorry to hear of your losses. I don't really have any advice - you know more about that than me. I hope you don't have the same problem again.

Good luck.

 

[morg]

Thanx John.
I have had a few people contact me via email to ask about the enclosure, so will update.

Ed has been in contact with me and has been a great help.[this man knows his stuff]
We ran through the things that could have contributed to this problem arising, and looked at ways to try to stop it happening again.

I have decided to completely take apart the enclosure leaving just the walls and foundations, and restart it again.
I am toying with the idea of possibly using it for toads this time, but am not certain yet.

 

[edward]

Hi Morg,
Thanks for the compliment.

I'm going to paraphrase a comment I made at IAD (which was a paraphrase of a comment a friend of mine made). Experience used to be directly porportional to number of amphibians killed. As I had my fair share of deaths when I was much younger (I had my first newt over 31 years ago...) and did learn from my mistakes (I started keeping newts in the basement over 28 years ago) I feel it is important for me to share any tricks I learned to minimize the deaths other people may otherwise experience.

Ed