Hey Guys!
I am a mama to 5 beautiful glider babies 4 female and one male. All of my gliders are in a healthy weight except one. She is just over 6 months now and has always been very tiny weighing only 56 grams when we got her. We have had a lot of health issues with her having made multiple emergency vet trips... We made the first one on Christmas eve because she had severe diarrhea and we were concerned. The vets ran various tests and told us that she was fine and probably just stressed because at the time she was alone in her cage because she didn't get along with our two oldest gliders.

We got two new gliders for her in January and they are so close they are inseparable but she is still losing weight... we rushed her to our regular vet because she wasn't eating and had severe diarrhea and they instructed that we were to put her on a special liquid diet as well as antibiotics for possible parasites and that she needed fluids because she was dehydrated.

We put her in the "quarantine" cage and kept her on the liquid diet, slowly weaning her off the liquid diet and on to her TPG again she had no issues with eating. She just doesn't seem to be getting better, she wasn't grooming properly and there were multiple times I had to give her a cloth bath because she was very very messy and matted... We put her back with the other two today and she seems to be a little happier now they are helping her to groom and she is done all of her meds and back on her normal diet, she is eating fine, gobbling up everything on her plate... but I just dont know what to do.. the vet said this was the issue and that it would resolve itself but when we weighed her she had only gained a single gram... this liquid diet was supposed to help her to gain weight and it didn't...

Any help is greatly appreciated!!

Thanks, Dawn

Hello, did they test her for giardia?

It could explain her recurring events of diarrhea and her failure to gain weight.

If it is giardia, 1 treatment is usually not enough and it needs 2 separate sessions in order to get rid of it because the parasite remains in the environment (cage, toys, bedding, pouches....) for 2 to 6 weeks and the gliders reinfect themselves with it.

they did test twice once in house and once to an external lab and they didnt find anything, they said the medication was just a "precaution" the other glider she is housed with have no symptoms at all... I feel as though if it were something like that then they would be symptomatic right?

Not necessarily, I've had the case, only 2 of my gliders were symptomatic, the others were not (except they seemed to be eating more than they used to), and worse, the parasites were not always detectable in stools (basically it is only detectable during the cystic part of their cycle, so not during the phase which might cause symptoms).
The problem was that the ones who were asymptomatic were still contaminating the cage, pouches and bedding with giardia cysts, and the 2 that were treated were getting infected again, it stopped once all the gliders were treated at the same time, even the asymptomatic ones.

Otherwise, she may has a metabolic issue preventing her to gain weight or assimilate food, but that's not something easy to diagnose nor easy to treat or compensate.

Okay so just a quick update!! turns out the baby can't handle citrus foods... after spending exuberant amounts of money at the vet and 2 rounds of antibiotics we decided to try her diet we changed her up, still on TPG but have been giving her apples and she has gained weight and the diarrhea is gone!! she is now at 63 grams and counting!! She still has a long way to go but we are so proud of her!! She is now started to average out to the same size as her sister!!! Thank you for all of your help... we are so glad our baby will be okay