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Chinchillas => Health => Topic started by: EmelieTollin on February 11, 2011, 09:18:07 AM

Title: Has anyone heard of a fungus called zygomycetes?
Post by: EmelieTollin on February 11, 2011, 09:18:07 AM

Hello!

I'm wondering if anyone in this forum has encountered a fungus calles zygomycetes in your chinchillas? Anyone heard of it at all? 

The reason why I'm asking is that one of my sister's females suddenly became ill a couple of weeks ago and we needed to put her to sleep. We sent her to a laboratory for an autopsy and the veterinarian sent some tissuesamples to spain and got the following results:


Cardiomyopathy (cause unknown)
Pneumonia (cause unknown)
the whole intestines was full of this zygomycetes-fungus (cause unknown)

The veterinatian will send uss the full autopsyreport, this is just what we know from our e-mail correspondence.

Accordingly to the veterinarian this fungus exists in soil and is not contagious to other chinchillas. The only question then is how she got it?! Through the hay? My sister feeds them only hay, chinchillapellets and regular water...

What do you think? Help is needed because almost no one has ever heard of this before here in Sweden!

Best regards,
Emelie Tollin

Title: Re: Has anyone heard of a fungus called zygomycetes?
Post by: Jhenderson27 on February 11, 2011, 03:12:11 PM

Regular water or filtered/purified water.  If its unfiltered you never know what can be in water, depending on the area it can be real bad.  Hence the term dont drink the water if your in Mexico.

Title: Re: Has anyone heard of a fungus called zygomycetes?
Post by: EmelieTollin on February 12, 2011, 09:14:15 AM

Thank you for your answer!

My sister lives in a house with their own well so she's thinking about sending a sample of water away for testing.
In the same time I feel that it would be a little bit weird if the water contains this fungus because I think that Sweden has the best water in the world. :/ And if the water cointains fungus she, her boyfriend, her 14 chinchillas, 3 cats and two birds would also get contaminated? No one else has shown any symtoms of this..

What treatments are there?

Title: Re: Has anyone heard of a fungus called zygomycetes?
Post by: Jhenderson27 on February 14, 2011, 07:55:13 AM

Not necessarily, we all have different immunities to things.  Just possibly the other didn't.  There could have been an underlying problem way in advance.  Just will never know.  Best of luck.

Title: Re: Has anyone heard of a fungus called zygomycetes?
Post by: heiwa on February 14, 2011, 11:17:22 AM

Quote from: EmelieTollin on February 12, 2011, 09:14:15 AM

Thank you for your answer!

My sister lives in a house with their own well so she's thinking about sending a sample of water away for testing.
In the same time I feel that it would be a little bit weird if the water contains this fungus because I think that Sweden has the best water in the world. :/ And if the water cointains fungus she, her boyfriend, her 14 chinchillas, 3 cats and two birds would also get contaminated? No one else has shown any symtoms of this..

What treatments are there?

Just remind that the water may not have contaminated but the water bottle/container does!!

Title: Re: Has anyone heard of a fungus called zygomycetes?
Post by: opaldamour on February 17, 2011, 09:47:05 AM

We us a Pure Water Filter for ourselves and our girls. I know personally our city water straight from the tap tastes terrible, so I'm sure it wouldn't be good for our girls. We use the filter to fill their water bottle. We also wash it throughly every week. Now my turtle... he doesn't care. Water is water to him.

Title: Re: Has anyone heard of a fungus called zygomycetes?
Post by: Debbie.nl.ca on February 17, 2011, 05:23:14 PM

 If I would/could drink it I'd give it to my animals. ::nod::