Tail Fungus Take Two

[ris9911]

oh my god i think i just bought one with that today!!! it has awsome markings and i was shocked to see that it was being sold at pets co but there was 4 in the tank and all 4 had it i thought it just dident have enough moisture and the skin around the bottom was stuck so i thought o well ill just bring it home put it in a kritter keeper and keep it really moist! i should have known theyer all sub adults just about!! maby i should keep it in a diffrent room all togeather ! omg omg omg! so what should i do! heres some pics of it btw where can i get some of that stuff i have betadine from when my red ear slider got fungus on the shell! but if thats not going to help i dont want to stress the little girl out for nothing!
if you right click you can view a larger pic of it also the affected area is firm and when you apply slight pressure the gecko seems to feel pain

[Hurley]

Be safe, quarantine that new one in a different room. Use good hygiene and don't let anything from that one's cage come in contact with the other geckos (including you until you wash your hands well). Handle it last, feed it last.

If that is a fungal infection, it looks like it's deep in the tissues (best I can tell from the photo) vs. a topical thing. It doesn't look just "skin deep", so I don't know if anything topical will reach all of the affected area. I'm skeptical that topical medications (betadine or chlorhexidene) would touch it. Dilute betadine (diluted to a weak tea color) is fairly safe. I wouldn't use it full strength, myself. Chlorhexidene is even more safe, but I don't know if either will do much. Anyone on the board with experience with the problem?

Dr. Alan, have you seen anything of the like?

[mrweaw]

Awww! Poor little one!! I'm so sorry I hope it gets better for you.

I think I will post this question on a couple of other forums and see if I get any different responses. If I do get anything useful, I will update it here.

Thanks for everyone's help,
Erin

[ris9911]

i seriously just thought it was having a hard time shedding but i guess its got this fungus ill start on the betadine washes on the tail if it starts to spread iv heard of ppl pulling off tails (mainly because of floopy tail) while i dont have the cajones nor the stomach to do this if this fungus has more ill iffects should i think about it its a really great looking animal! im going to the store in a few minutes and let them know they sold me a bogus animal and they should quarenteen those animals you never know if the other animals can get what they have too!! this could turn into an epidemic! also iv googled, dogpiled, jeeves it and nothing nada zilch zip 0 so is there other places i could look? any one know ofthe large breeder guy that had the infection?

[mrweaw]

I'm sorry The person who allerted me did not have the name of the breeder. I was hoping that by posting it in the forums they would come forward and give us some more info.

Hurley is a vet and knows her stuff and she is concerned about topical things working. Maybe she would give us her opinion on another medicine that could perhaps be obtained from your local vet? Something oral perhaps?

[ris9911]

thats a 4 hour drive to see a reptile vet my local vet for my cat and dog is like all of the other vets around here wortheless! im woundering if this partictular animal is worth risking infecting my collection?

[Hurley]

Like others here, all I've heard is that there is "some mysterious tail fungus" out there that leads to dropped tails and appears to spread in collections. I don't know if anyone has actually proven the problem to be caused by a fungus or if it's all speculation and pixie dust.

We're working on speculation here, so trying to treat without a diagnosis is iffy at best. If it were my own gecko, I'd be trying to identify what's on the tail causing the problem rather than just hitting it with the topical shotgun approach. Hard to tell in the pictures if there are any open areas / moist areas, but if there are, I'd personally try to get a touch impression and stain the slide to see if I see the causitive problem. If it looks infectious, sure would be nice to get a culture of it (bacterial/fungal) and identify the real cause. That makes things a lot easier to decide what type of treatment is best. My best advice is to take the little gecko in to a knowledgeable reptile vet and get a diagnosis.

As for a different medication, your guess is as good as mine, looking at all the info 2nd, 3rd, 4th hand. I do not specialize in reptiles (I specialize in surgery), so I would love to hear Dr. Alan's take on this. I can tell you if I had a client bring any animal in with skin looking like that, I'd be getting a slide of it to stain and see if I can see the type of organism that is the problem, then culturing from there. 2nd step would be to biopsy it and get a histopathological report on what's going on with the tissue and if there are infectious agents present.

Throwing oral medications at the gecko without knowing even whether it IS fungal or bacterial or what doesn't seem to be a very logical approach. Antibiotics like Flagyl or Baytril and the like won't touch a fungal organism. Antifungals won't touch a bacterial infection and can be harmful in their own right. You should know what type of disease you are treating before selecting a regime if at all possible.

I don't see the harm in using a dilute (weak tea color) betadine solution, but I wouldn't use it full strength. Chlorhexidene is also quite safe, but is better against bacteria than funal organisms. I am not familiar with any peculiarities with cresties on whether or not their skin is more absorptive and whether X concentration of Betadine is potentially harmful to them, so I don't feel qualified to recommend a more concentrated solution.

[Dr Alan]

Originally Posted by Hurley

Dr. Alan, have you seen anything of the like?

Nope. It would be nice to get access to one or more of these geckos and run cultures. Even checking them under ultraviolet might shed some light (pun intended). It does look to be an infection of some sort, but it could be due to something other than "fungus".

If anyone has a gecko with a problems like this (preferably before any treatment), PM me and maybe we can figure a way to try to pin this down.

EDITED 11/4. Whoops, Hurley. Didn't read your last post before I put up this one. Sorry.

[Matthew Parks]

I am wondering since this infection is isolated to only the tails, if the best course of action would be to simply remove the tail. I have only heard rumors about this problem but everyone seems to say it is isolated to the tails.

[BadAssHerps]

Yeah I toss in trun in my sleep now. No but really that would suck sooooooo bad to have that stuff spread to your whole colony. Now that's a biological weapon! :!:
-Eli