Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Is there a safe way (paint???) to write on or mark the shells? I have some hatchlings and they all look alike to me. I'd like to be able to tell them apart so I can monitor growth, etc.

I have often seen it done w/ a dot of fingernail polish.
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0.1.0 ornate box turtle
1.0.0 eastern box turtle
1.0.0 Yellow belly slider
0.1.0 Red belly cooter
0.1.0 Australian shepard
1.11.0 chickens
1.0.0 Dutch(rabbit)
3.2.0 children (do I still count the married ones?)
1.0.0 husband

I forget how I was able to contact the NC Zoo, but this is the reply that I received:

I understand you would like some advice on marking your turtles. We have seen nail polish used on the shell and that seemed to work well. You can also epoxy a label on the shell. The key is to make sure that the product you use does not get hot when applied to a material. Some epoxy will cause a chemical reaction. The other key is to look for a product that dries quickly. We recently used a 5 minute curing epoxy to adhere a transmitter to a box turtle and it did not cure for 48 hours. So a quick 30 second cure time would be preferable. Our vet recently epoxied a dog tag to his tortoise. He said that worked great. Another tip is if this turtle will be outside, try and make the product blend in to the environment. For example bright pink polish might attract attention to the turtle. We would want him or her to become a moving target. To answer your question, I don't think that acrylic paint will harm the turtle however, I am not familiar with this method and do not know what the cure time is for this product. Please email if you have any other questions. Let me know what you used and even send some photos if you would like. I always like to know what other people are doing.

PS the way we mark our turtles does not hurt them. It is similar to filing your nails.
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Patsy

Thanks for the replies. I currently am using acrylic paint (dries in a few minutes and is non-toxic), but it tends to wear off as they dig & burrow.

acrylic won't last long because it is water soluble, the fingernail polish will last longer.
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1.0 pastel ball python
0.1 mojave ball python
0.1 normal ball python
0.2 3-toed box turtles
2.3 eastern box turtles
0.0.5 3-striped mud turtle
1.0 northern diamondback terrapin
2.1 tiger salamander
1.1 red-sided garter
1.0 anerythristic red-sided garter
1.1 Iowa snow plains garter
1.1 Het butter stripe cornsnake
0.1 anerythristic motley cornsnake

Cured acrylic paint is not water-soluble, it just doesn't adhere to shells well. Fingernail polish is great. One thing to keep in mind is that you don't want to put something on the seams between the scutes, where it could interfere with shell growth.

No externally applied substance will be permanent; you just have to diligently re-apply it as needed. You can also notch the marginal scutes (this is the standard method for field mark-recapture studies) or use a dremel to etch a number onto a plastral or carapacial scute, but both processes are tricky with hatchling turtles.