Like other animals, reptiles and amphibians can get infected with parasites, viruses, and bacteria. These infections can unfortunately spread to other animals. For example, many experienced keepers have horror stories of battling the dreaded snake mites. By quarantining all new animals, not only can you prevent the spread of these diseases to other animals in your home, but it also provides you the opportunity to carefully monitor your new friend.

In general, all new animals should be quarantined for 60-90 days.

Space

Before you get a new animal, you should evaluate the space you have available. In an ideal world, new animals are not even brought into the same building as one with an existing collection. This is really only practical for larger facilities and not so much for private collections. It is recommended that new animals be in a different room from others at the very minimum, the farther the better.

Enclosure

The enclosure the animal will go into needs to be something that is easily cleaned. This includes all items that will go into the enclosure such as the hide, food bowl, water bowl, and any decorations. The substrate should also be something that can be easily removed and replaced like newspaper, paper towel, or butcher paper. While this is a temporary quarantine cage, it still needs to meet all the husbandry requirements of the animal