Illness/Sickness: Vulgaris with Ca deficiency?

One of my little vulgaris (a female, ca. 6 cm) suddenly doesn't look so good.

When I checked on them today, she seemed uncoordinated and sluggish, and there was a strange hitch in her step, as if her joints have turned to rubber. Her skin also looks a bit rough and darker than usual.

Could this be a Calcium deficiency? She lives in a box with 2" of substrate, loosened with leaves, with moss and hideouts, which is full of small invertebrates like isopods, whiteworms, small earthworms, springtails, bean beetles and fruit flies. I had hoped this would translate into a varied diet, but of course I have no way of knowing what she had actually been eating - for example, maybe she only ever ate the white worms? She's always had a full belly, as do her roommates, so she has been eating something...

My marmoratus and other vulgaris live in similar setups, and all of them look great. But if this is a nutritional thing, I'll have to re-think their setups.

I was thinking of putting her in a small box with nothing but small earthworms, which would be higher in calcium. What do you folks think?

I can't tell you if it's a deficiency, but I do recommend you get yourself a tub of Herptivite. I supplement my A. tigrinum with a worm coated with the powder once a month. You may find it in a pet store, or you can order it online. It's around $6 on Amazon right now.

thanks - I do have a vitamin/calcium powder and I always dust the fruit flies with it. Of course, I don't know if the newts really get enough of a dose.

I'm not sure any more that this is a deficiency - might be an infection too. I don't know - I put her separate and am watching, but I don't know what else I could do for her...

she's still the same - kind of weak and tottering. Her skin looks normal now; I think she has had a slow time shedding because she's too weak to rub against stuff to get the skin off.

Any more ideas what I could try to help her, or what her problem could be?

I'm mostly worried that whatever this is, is due to husbandry errors on my part. But I don't know: she's lived in this setup for 6 months, and has grown well and looked fantastic, as still do all the others. If this is nutritional, it came on rather suddenly...I guess that points to an infection - but why would she get one now?

I had a similar story happen to two of my original L.vulgaris. I like to think a dietary deficiency was not likely as i tried to provide a rich varied diet and i hand-fed.
I do have paranoid suspicions about water hardness being part of the issue, but it´s just a shot in the dark. We have very soft water around here and i thought that maybe that was causing trouble. I´ve had some issues with other animals and that´s a common factor, so, i don´t know....
Since it may be a patogen, i would start by quarantining the animal, it´s never really too late.
My advice would be to keep the animal cool, stress-free and fed with high calcium foods exclusively for a while. Perhaps even consider adding calcium supplements to the water.
Good luck, Molch!

yeah, I got her in a simple setup in a small deli cup, with some moss fibers and a piece of bark, and with tons of fruit flies heavily dusted in Ca supplement. And tonight I'll sort out some small earthworms and put them in there.

She still shows normal behavior - comes out at night to prowl and hides during day. She doesn't seem on her last leg yet, but she still looks weaker than normal...

Azhael said:

I had a similar story happen to two of my original L.vulgaris.

Click to expand...

out of curiosity...did they make it, or did they die?

They died, sorry Molch...
They lost a lot of weight after the first symptoms of uncoordination appeared and they were in really bad shape for some time but since they still ate occasionally, i didn´t euthanize them.
My animals were aquatic when it started, though, and the uncoordination was noticiable in the way they swam. Only when they were really bad did they turn terrestrial. Given the very fast rate at which they decayed after they died i used to assume it was some kind of infection but i really have no idea...infection, parasites, dietary deficiencies, i don´t know.
The one thing on a good note i can say is that another of my vulgaris showed the early stages of the same kind of condition (slightly uncoordinated and choosy with food) but recovered successfully when kept cool and fed exclusively with worms. It may have been dumb luck.

I would have thought that a calcium deficiency would be more likely to result in spinal kinks than in odd movements.

I've occasionally had terrestrial Lissotriton lose condition (and usually stop feeding) for no apparent reason- some go downhill rapidly, some gradually get better.

I sometimes suspect it's because they want to become aquatic (or that they can't get the moisture level they want). If so, I put them in a setup where they can choose. I find the easiest way to do this (without setting up a huge complex tank) is a half-piece of clay pipe in a few cm of water, with sheets of moss on top of it. I'll supply food on the moss and in the water as well.

If they do want to enter the water, it's obvious fairly soon- if not, there's no problem with them living on top of the moss.

This is what a nutritional deficiency looks like.

http://www.caudata.org/forum/member...s/european-newts/4104-nutritional-deficiency/

thanks. I have supplied water now for her former tankmates. I found one of them taking a bath last night, so maybe they're ready.

She looks nothing like the pic Justin posted. She looks normal to the eye, just uncoordinated when moving. She's still unchanged, which suggests that it isn't an infection either - I would think that would have progressed by now....

I'll keep trying; I guess she'll either recover or go to the big moss cushion in the sky (sniff...)...

I want to give an update:

she's still alive; at times she looks a bit better, other times worse again. An odd thing that has happened a couple times is, when I take her out of her container, she kinds seizes up, crunches her body together, goes all catatonic, and her throat and upper chest area become bright red as if suffused with blood. The first time she did that I thought she was dying, but then she recovered again.

The pix below were taken during one such "fit". See how her skin looks all old and wrinkly: amazingly, she has since managed to shed, and her new skin looks quite normal, but she's had two more "fits" since then.

At times, she appears almost normal, except that her limbs don't seem to work right; it's as though they've lost all coordination or muscle tone.

I assume she'll eventually die; but I'll keep trying until then. I just wish I knew what this is, so I can avoid it happening to any others.

She's separated from the others, and all of them still look okay.

The picture of the newt with the nutritional deficiency is a further along case... intial symptoms of hypocalcemia can cause motor coordination issues.. It can also cause seizures in similar to the one's described above.

I have to ask, what are you feeding the invertebrates in the original enclosure... The reason I ask is that unless there is a source of calcium they may have an issue due to poor calcium to phosphrous ratios. I would also consider substrate pH as a potential source since in some caudates, a low pH substrate results in the caudate losing motor function which can lead to death.

As an alternative, you can soak the newt in a solution of amphibian ringer's solution since that will allow for absorbtion of the calcium via uptake through the skin (if you are sure it doesn't have chytrid (which can cause abnormal motor function by disrupting the ability to osmotically regulate)....

Some comments,

Ed

nwmnnaturalist said:

I can't tell you if it's a deficiency, but I do recommend you get yourself a tub of Herptivite. I supplement my A. tigrinum with a worm coated with the powder once a month. You may find it in a pet store, or you can order it online. It's around $6 on Amazon right now.

Click to expand...

Herptivite doesn't include enough of a calcium source nor does it include D3. A further potential issue may be with the use of beta carotene as the sole source of vitamin A. Anurans have been shown to be either be unable to convert beta carotene to vitamin A or to poorly convert it. You are much better off choosing a supplement that contains vitamin A in the form of retinyl palmitate or retinyl acetate. There are a couple of different supplements that do this (Such as Repashy products).

Ed

thanks Ed!

If I tried Ringer's, how can I make it? Is there a recipe?

Also, how would I know she does not have chytrid (scary thought..)

I also have other vulgaris and some young marms growing up on the same diet in the same type of setups. The marms have grown from 6 to 10 cm like that and all look fat and strapping. The other vulgaris are also fine. If it is a Ca imbalance, why would it affect only that one animal?

I feed the fruit flies ff mix from Josh's frogs, the white worms eat leaf litter and small pieces of bread, the isopods eat leaf litter, egg carton and fish flakes, the earthworms eat vegetable scraps.

I'll test my substrate for pH...no idea what it is right now.

Hey,

There is a recipe for amphibian ringer's solution (ARS) in the article on bloat on caudata culture. If you don't want to make it, you can order it from several online suppliers like Fishers.

The reason I asked about the foods for the invertebrates is because a wide number of invertebrates sequester tocopherols which are a common preservative in many foods for pets. People don't often connect the fact that vitamin E is a tocopherol and that the inveretbrates can sequester it to 100 times or more than the levels found in the food source. This means that it can mess with the uptake of D3 and/or vitamin A. Both vitamin A and D3 are not stored by invertebrates to any significant amount (the invertebrates may store a small amount as a form of rhodopsin in the eyes) but D is at best used as a percursor for cholesterol synthesis.

I have also seen MBD in caudates fed primarily white worms that were fed on bread. It was with Pseudobranchus a. axanthus (there was a picture in the first online caudata.org magazine).

The reason you may not see it in the others may be due to that newt predating preferentially on one of the feeders.. or that there is something subclinically going on with it that changes the metabolic demand for the vitamin (D3) or is affecting the calcium uptake.

As for chytrid, you can check it for retained skin as it interferes with the ability to shed (but so can some viral infections) or do a swab and send it off to Pisces.

Ed

Here is an update on the little sick newt:

she is looking much better. Some time after the events above, I slowly turned her aquatic. She now has several inches of water, an island and lots of plants. She looks pretty good; skin is smooth and normal-looking. Her movements are still a bit klutzy and she is not as fat as I would wish, but otherwise she is behaving normally, wandering around the bottom or hanging in the plants near the surface.

I put some pieces of oyster shell in the water in hopes that it may provide calcium which she may absorb over the skin. No idea if that works though.

Her tank is full of blackworms and I also add Daphnia. However, I can't tell for sure whether she is eating. This species in general does not seem to have the tendency to stuff themselves to bursting a la firebellies or alpine newts, but still...any ideas on how I can stimulate her appetite? I have some hopes that if I get her to eat more, she can eventually recover fully....

Just curious what temperature are your vulgaris kept at molch?

in my newt room, where it's usually 55-60 in winter and maybe 62-68 in summer. Currently about 58 F (umm..about 14 C I think)