Rescued Suriname - Advice/Help

[Film&Boas]

Hey guys,

I’m new on the forum. Not a stranger to snake keeping, I have my own Suriname set up in a nice bioactive. He's growing nicely.
I rescued a female Suriname yesterday from a not so good situation, the original owner passed and that resulted in a big amount of his animals being neglected. A friend of mine took this female Suriname, who I was told is 2 to 2 1/2 years old (I think she’s more like 3), she’s almost 4ft. and this friend asked me to keep her. I drove 2 hrs to go get her. We don’t have linage info on her unfortunately other than knowing she’s a Suriname but seems like she’s from a premium stock.

She’s a really sweet girl. Very pretty. But she may be overweight. My friend mentioned he was feeding her medium rats every week to 10 days which I believe may too much. Hoping she hasn’t been power-fed. I inspected her once I got home and did see some scales pointing out, I did notice some rolls also. And what looks like some lines on certain parts of her scales ( attaching photo) He said she was perfectly healthy with no mites. I still went ahead and took some precautions and had her quarantined, with a paper towel I sprayed with mite spray and after letting it dry out i put it and her inside of a plastic container.

After a day I went to change the paper towel and I did see at least 5 dead mites. At that point I was pretty concerned. I remember walking with her into my reptile room while I was holding her at one point for a few minutes. I have 2 bioactive tanks there. I can’t help but think that some mites may have gotten into my tanks while I was grabbing a heat mat for her. Idk.

I’ve put her back into her quarantined tub. the idea is to keep her there for while. anyone know what is best timeframe for this?

If anyone has any respectful advice on how to get her mite free, and help her get to optimal health please share! I’d love to get her into one of these bioactive tanks but I gotta make sure she’s ok and my other buddy stays safe.

Here are some photos of my rescue. I haven’t named her yet either if anyone has suggestions feel free!

Thanks for reading!

 

[bcr229]

Given that most mite treatments involve a minimal enclosure and 30+ days of pesticide treatments, and you have two nice bioactive enclosures in place, I'd give the Nexgard a try. Since you took your new boa with mites into the other room, go ahead and treat all three. This thread actually got a timely bump.

Afoxolaner (NexGard®) in pet snakes for the treatment and control of snake mites

Afoxolaner (NexGard®) in pet snakes for the treatment and control of snake mites This is incredible news. One oral treatment, which can be put into a f/t feeder, then 24 hours later the mites are all dead, and 14 and 28 days later no living or dead mites were found. It was also shown safe...

faunaclassifieds.com

I do a 90 day quarantine for all new arrivals, and that cock starts to run when I stop seeing mites, or when the snake has stopped showing symptoms of an illness. Any regurge, sign of RI or other illness, mite sighting, etc. restarts the 90 day clock.

I agree that a medium rat every 7-10 days is too much, but that boa doesn't look fat to me either. Fortunately she's not done growing so even if she were fat you could get her to a proper weight easily. For now I would just increase the duration between feedings to every 2-3 weeks depending on whether the medium rat was on the smallish or largish side of medium.

 

[Film&Boas]

Given that most mite treatments involve a minimal enclosure and 30+ days of pesticide treatments, and you have two nice bioactive enclosures in place, I'd give the Nexgard a try. Since you took your new boa with mites into the other room, go ahead and treat all three. This thread actually got a timely bump.

Afoxolaner (NexGard®) in pet snakes for the treatment and control of snake mites

Afoxolaner (NexGard®) in pet snakes for the treatment and control of snake mites This is incredible news. One oral treatment, which can be put into a f/t feeder, then 24 hours later the mites are all dead, and 14 and 28 days later no living or dead mites were found. It was also shown safe...

faunaclassifieds.com

I do a 90 day quarantine for all new arrivals, and that cock starts to run when I stop seeing mites, or when the snake has stopped showing symptoms of an illness. Any regurge, sign of RI or other illness, mite sighting, etc. restarts the 90 day clock.

I agree that a medium rat every 7-10 days is too much, but that boa doesn't look fat to me either. Fortunately she's not done growing so even if she were fat you could get her to a proper weight easily. For now I would just increase the duration between feedings to every 2-3 weeks depending on whether the medium rat was on the smallish or largish side of medium.

Thanks so much for all of the great and much needed advice Melinda.

I saw a video earlier about diluting ivermectin with soap and water, after your reply i just canceled that order. Going to buy Nexgaurd in the morning.

I'll go ahead and keep her quarantined for 90 days. I was hoping it wouldn't have to be that long but better safe than sorry. I have a barranquilla getting here in about 2 weeks, will go ahead and do this same process on arrival with nexgaurd as well.

 

[bcr229]

I'd be interested to know how it works out for you. I've never used it as I've not had to deal with mites in over 10 years (knock on wood) so I always used Provent-A-Mite or other permethrin-based products to treat the enclosure, paper, and hide. In a bioactive enclosure that's not an option.

 

[Film&Boas]

I'd be interested to know how it works out for you. I've never used it as I've not had to deal with mites in over 10 years (knock on wood) so I always used Provent-A-Mite or other permethrin-based products to treat the enclosure, paper, and hide. In a bioactive enclosure that's not an option.

I'll have to weigh them all out and administer the pill accordingly. hopefully one pill can service all the animals we will see. I'll probably go with a small rat pup so its eaten and digested quickly. Thanks again for the great tip! I'll post on this thread with updates

 

[Film&Boas]

Update:

So It's been about a week with this rescued boa in quarantine. She's in a container with a bounty doused (then dried) in a permethrin spray, changed that once every 2 days or so. after first 24hrs, Over 100 dead mites on the bounty. I was in shock. I called my friend and told him he has to have a huge infestation at his facility and needs to check his animals asap. He didn't even seem alarmed... strange. At this point, I'm wondering what else didn't tell me? but that's another story for another time.

Anyway, I changed the bounty and redid the process. another 24hrs later, about the same amount of mites. this poor animal has been suffering. repeated the process again and this time waited 2 days. another 100 or so dead mites. so far removed around 300 or so. I've attached some photos of the second and third bounty changes, but you'll have to zoom in. I wonder how long she's been living in this condition? and how it will affect her in the future? or even how its been affecting her personality up to this point?

well...I'm happy to report that a week later, I only saw 1 dead mite when i changed the bounty today and zero live ones. this is the second time i change the bounty and barely see 1 mite. She's also a lot more active and just seems happier overall and more curious when i take her out to clean the enclosure.

I've also bought the Nex-gaurd and a professional mini-scale. they both finally arrived today. My next update will be a detailing of the weighing, and administration of the meds, however I can't imagine this girl has anymore mites at this point. This will nuke whatever is left. I will also treat 'Enzo' my male Suriname as we'll just in case. He's already in a bioactive tank. He's significantly smaller than she is and will need a 4th of the dose she is taking. He's only 2 yrs old but still pretty small for 2. Will post pics with next update

Thanks for reading yall!

Peace.

 

[bcr229]

Great job! Also it looks like you caught the infestation early but a mite egg can take up to 30 days to hatch out which is why you keep using the permethrin paper for a month after you stop finding dead adult mites - to catch any that hatch, because the permethrin won't kill the eggs but it will take care of any newly-hatched nymphs.

 

[Film&Boas]

Great job! Also it looks like you caught the infestation early but a mite egg can take up to 30 days to hatch out which is why you keep using the permethrin paper for a month after you stop finding dead adult mites - to catch any that hatch, because the permethrin won't kill the eggs but it will take care of any newly-hatched nymphs.

Thank you. Glad to hear I caught it early. And if this is early then I wonder what a really bad infestation looks like

I never really delt with mites so seeing 300 or so had me thinking the worst.

I’ll keep her quarantined with the setup til end of October. I’m currently getting ready to administer the Rexgard. Will post updates soon.

 

[Film&Boas]

So its RX day. first step is to weigh out the animals.

Enzo measured out at about 199 grams

Rescue: 924g

according to the text, we are looking at 2.5mg/kg

with that math the dosage for Enzo was 0.5mg and for my rescue 2.325mg.

getting to that dosage was a bit of a mission. it's really small. I took some FT hoppers and put the REX-G then fed the animals.
I chose a smaller rodent so it can digest quicker.

attached are photos of the process..

Now.... we wait....