Reptile & Amphibian Forums

We just moved our 3 Florida Soft Shells (6 mo, still palm/hand size and smaller) from a 30 gal tank to a 55 gal tank. After a couple weeks in the new tank they now have red spots on the plastrons of two of them and red on the tips of all of their noses. The two with red spots on their bellys have white plastrons. The other one without has a gray plastron. One of them appears to have some peeling on the nose. They're still energetic and eating regularly. They're all swimming around and appear happy. The tank they're in use to house our two red ear sliders who out grew the tank. The red ear sliders are still very healthy and we thoroughly cleaned the 55 gal tank before transfer. The Soft Shell's noses seem almost swollen. The marks on the belly look pattern like. The marks were already there for a while. They were gray in color, they just turned red. They did eat chiken the other day. I cooked it and was carefull to make sure it was fully cooked, but it was a change in their diet. Otherwise their main diet is crickets and reptomin sticks.
Any help to what this may be is greatly appreciated.
Thanks in advance!!

It's hard to say but it could very well be bacterial infections. Can you get the to a herp vet at all? If they are skin infections they need to be treated asap. You do not want them getting septic.

Good luck.

Thank you very much!
We found out that it's worms. We got some medicine for them and we're going through a treatment. It's pretty gross, but hopefully it'll work.
For people that are unaware of this kind of thing...there's teeny tinny, white hair-like things that we can see on the glass of the tank...if you look real close you can see them moving like little worms. They're pretty much a fungus. If nothing else, it's interesting. Hopefully this treatment works. It's no fun for any of us but the turtles are being so good for us. They're just sweethearts. It's hard to see them going through this even though they seem extremely active and healthy.
Thanks again!
-k