Lately I've encountered a problem with 2 of my 4 ackies which has me worried. It's affecting one adult female and one juvie. Their front nails seem to be bending backward almost, it's hard to describe but the front nails don't bend down like they should, rather, they point straight forward from the fingers, they're useless for climbing and probably for burrowing. On the adult female, I'd purchased her as a six month old juvie in April, and she had this problem with 3 of her nails, and an additional finger on each claw was missing the nail. I've had her for 8 months now without any issues, but in the last week the problem has suddenly blown up. I bathe them weekly and last week they were the same as ever, this week though, the nails appear as though they are about to fall off. The same is true for one of the juvies I'm raising in another tank, I purchased it three weeks ago and since its last bath, 4 of its nails that have this problem have become much worse, at least one of them appears as though it is going to fall off. The adult female is kept with another adult female who she's been raised with since hatching, and the other female does not have any problems at all with any of her nails. The juvie is almost three months old and is kept with a sibling it has been raised with since hatching as well.
The adult female is kept in a mix of dirt and sand, while the juvie is kept on a thin layer of dirt. The strange things about this are that it is affecting four of the front nails for each of the ackies, the back nails are all fine, and that the cage mates for each have had no problems with their front nails. I'm very confused by this and the fact that this problem has suddenly erupted in the last week has me very worried, something in the care has to change and I want to prevent this from getting any worse than it already is, I just don't know what to do. I've enclosed several pictures of the nails on the adult female, I'm sorry the pics are not of the best quality, my camera isn't good at taking pics of such a tiny size. Any advice/criticism is welcome, thank you!
Evelyn
