I was feeding my Pyxie tonight and got two nightcrawlers into her (she took 'em, as usual). But before sheate the second one the first one kept. . .for lack of any better description. . .trying to get out of her stomach. I've seen this before and that's why I usually wait a minute before offering her another worm. They're her preferred food.


I moved her out of her water basin and onto the moist paper towels I currently have (I hope those fecal results come back negative so I can move her out of that ugly hospital tank) and, after some consideration on her part, ate a second full sized 'crawler. Later she moved back into her water basin and I tried to feed her an adult male Dubia (I know she can/will eat more than what she did tonight, especially since her last poop was on 9/3). The roach's scuttling through the water sparked a good response out of her but it seemed the worm(s) trying to make another bid for freedom out of her again took the flare of it right out of her. She stopped and made these gulping movements to get them back down it looked like.


Also as I was offering her a third 'crawler (while she was still out of the water) she did this sort of. . . "yawning" like you normally see when they're shedding, but she clearly was not in this case. Might this have something todo with the escaping worms?

Long post short: she was clearly hungry, but the worms trying to get back out of her stomach killed her appetite. Is this a common occurrence? What can I do in the future to stop it? I already wait a minute in between feeding individual worms for just this reason. Though clearly not underweight, I'm used to seeing my Pyxie eat more than this per feeding. Perhaps I'll see if she'll take a couple of more worms before the daily disinfecting tomorrow (unless of course the vet calls by then and tells me she's finally nematode-free).

UPDATE: She made stool not long afterwards, and here's what it looked like. Is this the result of the staple of nightcrawlers I feed her (she's a bit picky, eating only a couple of Dubia before tiring of them and I offer Samurai only weekly, thinking it's too rich for a staple). . .or are the parasites still present (hoping vet will confirm that tomorrow)?
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She's currently acting a bit restless now for me taking her out of her water basin to clean it and probably because she hates the hospital tank as much as I do.