male satanic died today

ac251404 · #1 05-11-2009, 05:10 PM

Got home from work today and found in the bottom of the tank with dirt in his mouth. I'm really at a loss here as to what the issue was. The female seems to be doing fine comparatively. Both were CB and I saw them both hunting and eating and active. I just cant fathom what I did. The question now I guess is where to go from here. Should I quarantine the female to be safe or should I leave her alone? I'm really afraid that I put too much into not disturbing them that I did not see this coming. I just dont know what to do

GaryCrain · #2 05-14-2009, 07:36 AM

are you 100% sure that they are true CB and not just sold as such. It happens alot at shows. Not sure where or who you got your animals from.

Either way that sucks. Hard to know the cause really. Are your temps ok?

ac251404 · #3 05-14-2009, 08:26 AM

No I am positive they are CB. I got them from Lawrence who often posts here and he has been absolutely excellent in helping me examine my husbandry after this issue and before. The female of the pair is still doing fine so we are thinking it's just one of those cases where we'll never really know what happened. The only big clue is that there was a hemorrhage at the base of the tail. I've seen this referred to in the very comprehensive caresheet authored by Mike Martin. In the case he mentions, the male was just reaching sexual maturity and my male also happened to be in that same age range. That is as close of a correlation as I've been able to draw to any known issues. My temp/humidity sensor has a memory for min/max values and my temps never got lower than 63F or higher than 78F. The only other thing I could point to was that the humidity would sometimes drop down to around 55 by the time I got home from work but I was also spraying at 8:00am, 5:00pm, and at lights off so I don't read too much into localized drops like that. All there is to do now is take the best care I can of my girl and hope to get another male sometime next year.

RFB2 · #4 05-14-2009, 09:36 AM

I do not think that your humidity was an issue. Having a dry out period in between misting is not a bad thing. Mine are in an air conditioned room. I spray heavily once in the morning and at night when the lights go out. The a/c sucks out most of the humidity through out the day and night. I would not reed into it too much. Cleaning the cage and quarantining the female would not hurt seeing as you are unsure of cause of death. Even though it was captive bread doesn't mean that it was free of flaws. Even captive bread animals can have issues that we are unaware of until we find them dead.

Keep you chin up,
Rob

cindy · #5 05-14-2009, 10:07 AM

Sorry for your loss!!

Since I don't keep Uroplatus ssp, I can't help you figuring out, what to do next. But I sure hope your female stays fine!!
Good luck with here,
Kind regards,

Cindy

sikorae · #6 05-14-2009, 02:36 PM

I agree everything you did sounds fine, its just one of those unfortunate things that can happen with uroplatus species. Will you be able to get a pm to find out what happened?

MonteQ's · #7 05-14-2009, 03:47 PM

Thats a shame man. Sorry to hear about your boy.

The conditions sound pretty good to me too. What did you mean by a hemorrhage at the base of his tail? Was it a prolapse?

I hope the female will continue to do well for you. I wouldn't take it too personally, these guys really can be quite fragile at times. The best thing you can do is to try to learn from it moving forward.