Is my Vietnamese Centipede injured?

[rinderpest]

I've had my adult Vietnamese centipede, Hamburger Lady, for about 6 months now. She's been healthy and happy up until recently. She's still active and eats regularly, but a couple weeks ago I noticed some sort of black growth on her side. It hasn't seemed to grow, change, or affect her at all until last night, when I noticed the leg closest to whatever's on her side was missing. I'm not sure if the leg fell off due to some other natural cause, and the black stuff I'm seeing is part of the healing process, or if this growth caused her leg to fall off. I know the leg will grow back when she molts; my main concern is if this black stuff on her side is harmful to her. Like I said, this hasn't affected her behavior or appetite as of yet, but I want to know whether or not this is something anyone else has seen since I couldn't find any information anywhere else. I'm very in love with my Burger Baby and I'm crossing my fingers that this isn't anything that will kill her in the end. Here's the best picture of the black on her side I could get (and yes, I know her tank looks pretty dry. This was taken right before it was misted down):

 

[NYAN]

Interesting predicament, first off your centipede has an awesome name. You just suddenly noticed the black growth, did it not slowly develop? Also was the leg acting differently than the rest? I am wondering if the leg may have been bothering it and the centipede chewed it off, I’ve never seen centipede blood before so I don’t know if that is what it is. I am aware centipedes can get mycosis also, this makes the area turn black if I am correct also, can anyone confirm if it is?

 

[rinderpest]

Interesting predicament, first off your centipede has an awesome name. You just suddenly noticed the black growth, did it not slowly develop? Also was the leg acting differently than the rest? I am wondering if the leg may have been bothering it and the centipede chewed it off, I’ve never seen centipede blood before so I don’t know if that is what it is.

Yeah, it was pretty sudden. I didn't notice any difference in the way she'd been using her legs, but just with any other centipede, she spends a lot of time hiding. It almost looks like it could be something that could be scraped off, i.e. dry blood but obviously I wouldn't want to risk doing that whether or not that's what it is. I'll let her know you like her name.

 

[NYAN]

She is wild caught I assume, correct? Can we get a better view of the enclosure and how you normally keep the substrate perhaps?

 

[rinderpest]

She is wild caught I assume, correct? Can we get a better view of the enclosure and how you normally keep the substrate perhaps?

I bought her online from Backwater Reptile. She's in a 10 gallon tank with about 4 or 5 inches of coco fiber, and a couple inches of moss over that. Coconut bark and a clean deer skull for hides. I don't have a humidity gauge but I keep it adequately moist in there- not too damp but not dry. She's kept at room temp, and has a shallow water dish in there too.

 

[NYAN]

Ok so it’s wild caught, if it is mycosis it could’ve come from the wild. I would wait for others to chime in here since hearing many points of view is best. Your setup sounds good, however adequately moist is relative. Also my experience is backwater reptiles is ok, I’ve bought maybe 3 times from them. Others do not like them, seems they have a really bad history.

 

[rinderpest]

AFAIK this is my only experience with Backwater... I don't remember where I got my hissers from years ago. I just searched up mycosis and it makes a lot of sense. The pictures look similar too. I recently got a newer, more powerful spray bottle for misting down her tank; I didn't think I'd been saturating her tank any more than before, but it helped to prevent my hand from cramping up lol. Hamburger's my first myriapod... I'm reading that as long as I let her enclosure dry up and wait for her to molt, this will pass, right?

 

[NYAN]

I’ve never dealt with it as far as I know, so I’ll let others chime in.

 

[kermitdsk]

Of course you can not say 100% that it is mycosis but I would guess it is. Unfortunaly mycosis is common among centipedes. Sometimes they molt and everything is fine again and sometimes they die. Often people try to fight mycosis by drying the substrat, I'm not sure if this really works because you also weaken the centipede too. I would depending on whether it gets worse either let everything as it is or let the substrate just dry a little only a bit drier than normal and give a waterdish but never completely dry out. And wait for the moult. I'm crossing fingers.

 

[Salvador]

I like the TG reference!

A lot of these seem to be from the result of injury, see a lot of it with wild-caught centipedes. If it develops under husbandry, it's usually a result of conditions being a bit too damp and open to bacterial/fungal growth. It's most common in the legs though. As above, keep an eye on conditions, but don't let it go dry, S.dehaani are not great fans of that.

 

[LawnShrimp]

This appears to be mycosis that spread to the body, which is usually uncommon. I have several wild-caught centipedes that arrived with several spots of mycosis on forcipules, legs, and antennae, but after their first molt in captivity they black areas disappeared and they are doing fine still, and the mycosis has not come back. I haven't seen mycosis exactly like this before. If you can get a closer picture that would help immensely.

Continue to keep her dry, as from your picture it seems that the top layer of substrate is not too moist. Hopefully she will molt soon and the wound will heal, though as the mycosis spread to the joint where the leg attaches, she may not grow the leg back. Centipedes only regenerate legs from a certain point which legs usually break from, but if that point is damaged, the leg does not always regenerate.

Good luck with your 'pede, I hope she molts soon.

 

[Witherskull564]

I have had the same problem with mine and can seem to figure out if it’s black fungus growing on him or if it’s just blood

 

[Raptorr]

How is it doing now??

 

[Witherskull564]

He is fine and doing great it seems if you limit how frequent you humidify the enclosure it usually kills off the black fungus and as long as the centipede has enough substrate to get its own humidity it should do significantly well