Red Nose?

[HondaRaycer]

My black gerbil Eclipse, I noticed today, has a bit of red stain under his nose. He has a white snip of fur on his mouth so that's how I noticed. It looks like a nosebleed kind of. He's eating and drinking fine, and plays with Lancer just fine (his cagemate). I held them both up to my ear and neither of them are making a clicking noise.

The two of them are in a glass tank, so I dunno if Eclipse may be rubbing his nose on something? I am on aspen bedding, and he never had a red nose before. I was using the Sun Seed Sunthing Special Aspen, but bought the Hartz Aspen this time around since it was a huge bag for a lot cheaper. I changed their bedding last Saturday and now I notice this. Lancer doesn't have a red nose, so should I wait a few days to see if it clears up or just buy some carefresh immediately and change their bedding?

P.S. I put one of those one serving small cereal boxes in the tank for them to chew. Maybe that is what he is allergic to? I put that in yesterday.

[ruxyk]

Maybe he was digging in a corner of the tank and he got injured. If it doesn't get worse you don't have what to worry about it.If it gets worse then try changeing the bedding in order to observe how he reacts.
Good luck!

[HondaRaycer]

His nose is just as bad this morning and now he is rubbing at it. He is still active and and doing all the gerbil-y things though. It is distressing for me to even see him with his little red nose. I'm gonna buy some Carefresh ASAP just to be sure. I don't sleep very well when one of my animals isn't healthy.

[HondaRaycer]

And how long, by the way, would it take for his nose to clear up once I put the carefresh in? That way I will know that it is the bedding and not something else?

[ruxyk]

I think the difference will be visible in maximum 3 days.It depends on how the bleeding is.Try removeing for a couple of days the things he could use to rubb his nose because it could fasten up the healing.
take care

[whitmoregirl]

I had this problem with two of my girls, Kali and Kess.
Kess' nose got pretty bad; it was "bleeding", and she rubbed it continually. I changed the bedding (which was the commercialised type) to toilet paper, and the her nose soon cleared.
After I while, I (stupidly) decided to see if I could slowly bring up an immunity, so added a little of the bedding to the tissue paper in the hopes that she could soon be used to it.
Sadly, it was not her but Kali, one of her cagemates, who got a funny nose. It got so bad that the fur all fell off, and eventually I got so worried I took her to the vets.
The vet, Ingrid, told me that her nose had an infection, and gave me some eyedrops for dogs and cats to apply to it to clear it up.
Luckily, within a few weeks it did, and the fur regrew.
Recently, her nose went funny again due to my cousins misunderstanding my firm rules when I went on holiday, and she is now back on the nose blobbing.
http://i10.photobucket.com/albums/a108/whitmoregirl2/Kali%20Kess%20Sienna/DSC02796.jpg
- recent picture of her. She is the lilac, Kess is the cp grey agouti, and Sienna is the golden argente, who seems to be perfect and has no medical complaints!
If your gerbil looks like he is getting to look like Kali (nose-wise) I strongly advise a visit to the vets, and to remove anything new you may have added to his cage.
It could be anything, from a block of wood, or the sawdust, or bedding, like mine.
Good luck :)

[HondaRaycer]

Eclipse is not letting me look at his nose right now, so I will have to check in the morning. The pet store didn't carry Carefresh, but did have Cell-Sorb Plus ( something like Carefresh) so I used that instead. My friend told me about Hartz products and how they have hurt animals in the past (Hartz is the Aspen I had just used when I noticed Eclipse's nose). I am keeping an eye on Lancer's nose but he seems to still have no problems.

[HondaRaycer]

When I woke up and changed their food/water Eclipse was awake so I tempted him with a SF seed and turned him over to get a good look at his nose (I think he's used to being upside down now). It's almost all cleared up! But thank you, for putting the picture of the lilac up so I would be able to tell the difference between allergy and infection.

[whitmoregirl]

No problem, I'm glad he's getting better :)

[xOfiNha]

I recently had my two gerbils with red noses. They scratched their noses in something rough and they had blood on their noses. I took them to the vet as soon as I realise it was not the bedding that was causing that. Spent some days treating their noses with some stuff the vet recomended and their noses are now healed. :)

[SpunkyMunky]

There could be a few things making his nose red:

-Mucus, gerbils have red mucus. Nothing to worry about here.
-Irritation, caused by an allergy to aspen, its very possible for him to develop and anlergy, try changing the bedding to corn-cob.

You have to make out an alergy and mucus, change the bedding to corn-cob, if his nose gets better after a while, it was an allergy, if his nose is still red after a while, it's not an allergy and you can switch back to aspen if you want.