Too good to be true!

Hairless Dumbo Rat

After a week or two in the new room I was all adjusted and was working well while in there without bumping into anything or feeling cramped.  I was anxious to continue to ramp everything up and go as big as I could.  I had been attending my local reptile show and was looking at new snakes and seeing what I wanted to do with the five I had. *Side note, I recommend you find a local reptile show near you and check it out, they usually are once a month and are cheap to get in.  Even if reptiles aren't for you go and check out a show, they aren't these vicious killing machines everyone has chalked them up to be.  Also  http://www.youtube.com/user/SnakeBytesTV is a VERY informative YouTube channel that was created by one of the world's largest snake breeders. *  Back to my post :-P , so while at the reptile show I noticed someone selling pet rats with some genetics I was interested in.  Yes all my rats are feeders but it is a breath of fresh air opening a tub and seeing something other than all white or all black, it's nice to have some variety in there.  After looking over what they had I decided on purchasing one male hairless dumbo rat, one female hairless dumbo rat, and one female dumbo rat.  A dumbo rat has ear that are more rounded and on the side of their head instead of on the top of their head, a hairless is exactly what it sounds like, no hair.  I rushed home, put them in a new tub, got them water food and a piece of wood to chew on.  I checked over them for the next couple days and then this is where it all started to go down hill.  I now had about 20 adult breeder rats and about 50-60 weaner rats along with my 5 snakes in this small room, I walked in one day to check on my rats and I had lost nine rats in one night! I was astonished and dumbfounded.  I had lost my brand new hairless dumbo female, four other breeders and four weaner rats.  I sadly pulled all of them out, cleaned and sprayed all the tubs and then went about my day.  I checked them again that night as I would every other day and to my surprise five more dead rats.  At this point I'm beyond mad I'm just sad and broken down.  That's 14 rats within 24 hours.  I did some looking around and it was either a disease within my collection or it was the fact that I had zero air circulation and the ammonia was building up causing them to die.  It was now November and was too cold out to leave the door open for air flow so I had to put a small fan in there to try to circulate the air and it helped a little bit but I had too many animals in the small room. To make matters worse winter was coming and even with a space heater in the room it was still too cold over night for anyone to survive.  I put up PVC butcher flaps along with a thick blanket to keep the heat from escaping out the door. This helped with keeping the heat in but in the same respect it kept the ammonia inside the room as well.  I feel like at this point everything is against me and there's no winning or being able to progress.  I had some thinking to do to see what was possible or if I just had to give up :'(