A lot of this threads remedies are not immediately available. At the onset of symptomatic tingling, to stop any development of an unsightly blister & obviate the need for scabbing that will take weeks to fall away there is a really easy trick. Buy a product for gum pain, like tube sold for denture irritation (these are a heavy colloid designed to stay in place) & apply (dab it on, do not rub it in) this directly on the lips where feel a herpes cold sore is brewing. Repeat as often as deem needed, throughout your waking hours, for as many days as feel threatened. If you do not test scrape your lips with your teeth, or probe lick the spot with your tongue, or scrub wash spot, or hot compress the site the treated cold sore will NOT develop - unless you stupidly dehydrate the site from excess direct sun exposure, thereby promoting the site's skin to crack. These tubes for denture pain are way cheaper than any products touted just for labial herpes. The active ingredient, 10% benzocaine, is a local anesthetic that keeps you from fretting the site into a full blown outbreak. When you use this & let the tingling site alone it will still threaten to get worse, but in reality the bump will dry out un-noticed by anyone but you. This drying up is not so much the lip's meaty tissue as it is the virus & auto-immune response factors being kept to a minimum inside the flesh. Keep the benzocaine tube capped & you can use it again for years. It is also very convenient to take with you so can re-apply throughout the day. It is a heavy cream & people might notice the white daubed on your lip - be resolute & don't rub it in (remember, roughing up the site will make the outbreak course unstoppable). It is my experience that this simple remedy also makes the repeat intervals of outbreak less frequent.

wow, this is an old thread! So much has changed in the last couple years.....some good, mostly bad. There are now several different strains of KHV, meaning the virus is mutating. It is just as deadly as ever. Heat cycling a fish to force the virus to show it's self has been found to be of little benefit. Putting a niave fish from your own collection while the new fish is in QT is also of little benefit (at least for the purpose of KHV detection). The only way to know for sure is to have new fish blood tested, which is usually done by the dealer since drawing blood is outside the ability of most hobbiests. A KHV survivor can live with the virus for a long time and not show any ill effects for a long time. How long? Unknown at this time. But like the chicken pox virus in humans comes back as shingles in adults, the KHV virus can live in a koi or goldfish for a long time and then the fish can start to shed the virus again, killing other pond inhabitants. So my advise? 1. Only buy fish from trusted sources. 2. Only buy from dealers who test the fish for the active virus, and also the antibodies. 3. destroy ALL fish that have been exposed to KHV or assume the risk that these fish can infect others later down the road. Pretty scary stuff. Be careful.

Interesting stories. On Saturday, I was a couple of counties away from your Sunday excursion area, roaming for new areas in Linn, KS and Barton, MO. We saw a lot of DORs (and a few AORs) though, including one slender glass lizard in Barton County that would have been a county record had I collected it-- didn't realize it until I got home. It was a few degrees warmer that day than Sunday. We also saw some syspila and I was torn up by a very pretty, but ornery great plains rat along the border.

Mike, I might see you at Snake Road on Sunday. Rachel and I are taking her parents who will be visiting from the east coast to Snake Road on Saturday (it will be their first real herping trip and they've never seen a venomous snake in the wild). Provided they like it, we'll probably be back again on Sunday.