Weird morning body spasm.

[redtail2426]

Ok my 7 month old black and white tegu is 30 inches long growing very rapidly. He gets a varied diet of rats, mice, nightcrawlers, roaches, ground turkey, fish, and also many various fruits like papaya, raspberries, blueberries, grapes, and mango. Everything gets dusted with jurrasi cal calcium supplement except for his rodents and I dust his meals on mondays with repti vit vitamins. He has a mega ray basking bulb with a 3 foot repti sun 10.0 bulb all at the proper distances. His basking temps are 100-115 cooler temps are 75-85. Ok now the issue is that when he wakes up in the morning he will go over to his basking rock sit on there for about 20 minutes. Then he will breathe in turn his head to the left and his body will kink to the right then he will have a body spasm chringing his body to the right and his head to the left with 1 to 3 spasms and he will do this once or twice in the morning only on his initial warm up and then he will not do it for the rest of the day ever. He is very active, eating well, pooping well, drinking plenty of water, and shedding well. When I took him to the vet about 2 months ago when he had a cold is when I first noticed it and I told the vet about it and she said it could be due to a lack of calcium but since then I have upped his calcium intake with no results. He also had a fecal run while he was there and it was clean. So I am lost as to why he is having these weird morning body spasms when he seems to be perfectly healthy.

 

[gebris353]

Could you record him with a camera? I dont know if I'm getting the idea, but that reminds me when they eat something big, they have some contractions (head to left and body to right thing) Am I right or what you are trying to tell us is completly different?

 

[VARNYARD]

That sounds kind of odd, do you see any twitching at all?

 

[redtail2426]

Yeah kind of like that he forms like the letter S with his head to the left and his body (shoulders) pointing to the right. I can get some video but I need to charge my batteries.

 

[redtail2426]

Nope no twitching it is very odd indeed I will have to get this on camera in the next few days. Well my batteries are charged so hopefully they wont die while I sit there and record him for like 30 mins.

 

[VARNYARD]

Cool, that will be helpful if we can see what is going on.

 

[redtail2426]

Ok here is the link to the video <!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://s243.photobucket.com/albums/ff122/redtail2426/?action=view&current=rexspasm.flv">http://s243.photobucket.com/albums/ff12 ... xspasm.flv</a><!-- m -->
He did this an hour after he woke up today he moved off of his basking spot about 45 mins after he woke up this is the first time I have seen him do it off of his basking spot and I think it was due to the fact that he was kind of curious/annoyed about the camera and started moving. He only chringed once today but when he does this he will chringe 1 to 3 times all at the same time and he will do that 1 or 2 times per day always in the morning right after warming up or while warming up. Sometimes they are harder chringes and sometimes they are soft chringes.

 

[VARNYARD]

Ok, to start with you need to remove that leaf he is laying on, it is Scindapsus aureus, Pothos aureus and is a toxic plant. this plant is known to cause burning in the mouth and the sap may also be irritating to the skin.

 

[redtail2426]

lol that is a fake plant they are all fake.

 

[VARNYARD]

Well I thought I found the cause, it would sound about right if it was irritating him. :roll: So we must keep looking for the cause.

 

[joshandjack]

hopefully he didnt eat a huge piece of bark. i had a baby tegu die when i used bedding with large peices of bark, which i suspected the tegu may have ingested, so for my younger tegus, i only use bedding that i know they can pass if it were to be ingested .

 

[redtail2426]

well he poops on a regular basis with no problems so I wouldnt think a big peice of bark would be inside him. One thing I did think of though was that he was drinking softened water which has the calcium and magnesium removed and has extra salt in it for about 5 months and his food was thawed out in it to. But I called my vet and asked her if this should be a concern and she said that it should not be a concern. But just out of curiousity I give him regular unsoftened tap water now.

 

[mr.tegu]

So what was the cause/reason?

 

[DaveDragon]

This thread is a year old. He hasn't visited here since 07/08.

 

[mr.tegu]

Oh wow..sorry for the old up bringing, What would you guess this was from?