So this is going to be just kind of a general overview of what it is, what it should accomplish, and things to consider.
Quarantine, what is it. It is providing a separate area away from your collection to do 3 things. Firstly to make sure they are parasite free, mites! (See my last post) secondly to make sure they are free of disease, respiratory, or worse. Third thing is to acclimate the new arrivals to your way of keeping. All this should be handled as far away from your main collection as possible! Preferably in a different house, but a separate room works too.
So you now have the qt set up in a separate area if your house, now what not to do. Do not do any maintance on the qt animal before you go into your main reptile area. Do keep all tools and cleaners separate from the main room. Things to watch out for, excessive mucus from the mouth, wheezing, any cough, sneeze anything like that. Little black specs moving around. I cannot emphasize enough that your qt caging needs to be as sterile as possible. Preferably white paper towels, or unprinted news paper. Something where mites are going to stand out. Now if they do have mites see my last post. Any of the excess mucus, etc, vet straight away. Now how long to wait. So minimum 30 days (minimum if no husbandry changes are needed) make sure it eats, poops, maybe sheds? 30 days may not be long enough for it get into a shed cycle. But make sure it eats and poops. At about the 2 week mark you want start converting it to your method of keeping. More on that on a later post. Just suffice it to say that if the breeder used a 90* hotspot, and you want to use a 85* hotspot, this is the time to start dialing down the hot spot. Watch the new animal and see how he reacts. This should take the full 2 weeks and then another 2-4 weeks to see how he adjusts to your method. So we are now at 60 days minimum. (Assuming snake is healthy and the husbandry change went off without a hitch) something’s like crypto may not show up for 90+ days, and if your in Australia the sunshine virus I think takes 6-9 months to show up. Scary stuff.
