Cleaning/Sanitizing Enclosure & Passing of our girl, Karma

drj5600

Member
Hey guys - just wanted to hop on here and get some helpful advice. Our female Jackson's passed recently and I am now left with a fully branched, plant-filled XL Reptibreeze enclosure. I have a juvenile female veiled that I was actually needing to upgrade to a larger habitat and I would love to move her into Karma's old enclosure however, where do I even start with sanitizing and cleaning it well enough to place a new animal in the enclosure? I have lots of live plants, branching, vines etc and it was reconfigured and thoroughly cleaned ~2 months ago.

A little background on our girl that passed: it was nothing of the contagious or preventable in nature. We found her Sunday morning hanging upside down in her enclosure (very unusual for her) with a bloody mouth, lethargic with a weak grip, distended belly. My immediate thoughts were she's either got a gnarly glandular infection or she's severely impacted. We immediately took her to the vet school - luckily we live about 20 minutes from one of the best in the country - and their excellent exotic team did a complete work-up including a full blood panel, physical exam, and x-rays. She was unfortunately in kidney failure and we ultimately decided it was in her best interest to put her to rest. While poor/uneducated husbandry is the leading cause of kidney failure in our captive reptile friends, it appears she was genetically doomed from the beginning. We had a necropsy completed and her kidneys were all out of whack even from the earliest stages of her development - probably a result from the inbreeding of the jackson's species.

With all of that being said, what do you guys suggest? Pulling everything out and starting with fresh branching? Is there a way I can sanitize this enclosure without having to rebranch? Thank you in advance!
 
I had a veiled female that passed a few months ago and I was able to clean and sanitize all plastic plants with hot boiling water and rubbing alcohol on the live plants leaves I now have a male panther in that same cage she was in and he is doing perfect I have had him now in that cage for 5 months with no issues he is happy, healthy, and very active. My female was also named Karma.
 
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It is very difficult to sterilize anything that is porous like wood, cloth or soil. Plants are also a challenge. I found recently that you can treat most plants with full strength clear ammonia from the grocery store for 15 minutes then rinse very well and they will survive. Don't soak the soil with ammonia. Replace the top inch or two of soil. That will get most microbes and the easier to kill parasites. If you are sure you aren't dealing with anything contagious 15 minutes of ammonia might do the trick to sanitize not sterilize.
~THIS HAS TO BE DONE OUTDOORS AWAY FROM PETS AND CHILDREN! WEAR EYE PROTECTION IF YOU ARE GOING TO SPRAY IT. DO NOT USE BLEACH AT THE SAME TIME!~
 
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