Indian Star nose bubbles/species seperation?

KapiyvaExotics

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Hi guys, long time member/reader but this is my first post...I want to get some opinions from other star keepers on my issue/concerns.

Long story short, I bought a young adult 2.2 group of Indian Stars recently. On arrival they were bagged and soaked like they all peed all over themselves during shipping, they did have a heat pack but it was 40F that day so they were all chilled. Straight out of the box they all had clear nose bubbles but seemed fine otherwise. I have them set up indoors in my small warm room right now. Warm room is 85/90F ambient, 100F basking and 70-75% humidity. They have been in the warm room for 8 days now and get soaked daily, they seem fine but the intermittent clear nose bubbles persist, they do seem slightly better than they were a week ago though....the bubbles certainly aren't getting worse but I don't know how long I should expect to wait on them to clear. Otherwise they are eating and active, none of them seem stressed at all, the boys have not been pestering the girls or anything so I see no need to seperate them...the girls have even been digging a lot of test holes like they are going to lay soon. At this point I'm really not sure this is any kind of respiratory infection, it doesn't seem to be progressing at all and all discharge is clear so I've decided to hold off on a vet visit for a little while and see if it clears.

So here's my concern, this is a small 5x10 winter holding warm room. These 4 Indian stars have half of the room in an xxl kiddy pool but I currently have some other species of small torts in the room in seperate holiday tubs as well...and I'm supposed to be getting 10 baby burmese stars tomorrow that will need to go in the room in a new tub as well.

So my question is...is there any concern of airborne contagion here? I've read some places that a lot of bacteria/viruses are airborne and they need to be kept 6 foot away from each other minimum...I've read other places that respiratory infections are absolutely NOT airborne and the only concern of transmission is through direct contact or people touching them and transferring it. I'm not really concerned about that as I'm the only one that touches them and my hands get washed/sanitizer directly afterwards but are they safe to all be in the same warm room together? I really hope so because my enclosure space options are are very limited this time of year. Thanks for the help in advance.
 

Tom

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When respiratory infections set in, it can takes weeks of the correct temps to get rid of it, and Indian stars are notorious for this. I advise people to maintain an ambient of 85-90 and soak daily until two weeks after symptoms disappear. One thing to note is that if the kid pool is on the ground, it might be significantly cooler down there than higher up in the room. Have you check the floor temp of their enclosure?

I would not keep new babies in the same room with tortoises showing signs of RI. I don't know that you will get a consensus or real lab data on whether or not it can ever be airborne, or not, but my POV is: Why risk it?

I'm bummed you didn't decide to get your Burms from me, but everyone has their reasons. I wish you best of luck.
 

KapiyvaExotics

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My warm room is basically set up like a huge closed chamber with multiple tubs inside of it. Ground temp ranges from 82 to 105 on the hottest part of the basking area. These babies were in the works and deal was done before we started talking, I am still interested in yours as well as I want a large unrelated group but I need to make sales first to free up funding and make that happen. Thanks for the help.
 

KapiyvaExotics

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And I did end up taking your advice Tom, I don't think the airborne contagion is much of a threat but the more I thought about it there's no point in taking any unnecessary risk, especially with babies. So they went straight into their own closed chamber in the house and skipped the warm room all together.
 

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