Reptile & Amphibian Forums

My baby Loggerhead Musk basks alot. Recently over the last week I haven't been able to get the water temp. up past 72. I'm guessing it's not normal for it to be basking as much as it does but I'm not sure, it usually basks 2 or 3 times a day and spends atleast an hour each time. What does anybody think? Also, I wanna get it to start eating fish, how do I go about that? Not feed it for a few days? I usually just put a worm in the tank with it and it eats it overnight.
Michael
Michael's Place

hey, i do not think you can feed him fish if he is still in the ice cream bowl, and i would recomend that you have a filtered tank to have fish in it, if the turtle does not eat it right away the fish can make the tank pretty dirty, and abou the basking to much i don't no what to do but i had a baby razorback musk and he basked to mush and basically killed himself by drying himself out

The turtle spends alot more time in the water than basking. It is not in the ice cream bowl anymore. I moved it into a large rubbermaid container. The only land area in the container is a large waterbowl that has moss in it. UV light is over that. I've tried many times to get it to eat fish, mainly dead ones, but it did have 3 guppies living with it in the bowl. I don't mind how dirty the container gets, I clean it every 3 days anyways. I can't get it to accept turtle food either. Only chipped ham and worms.
Michael
Michael's Place

He's basking often because the water temp is to low. I reccomended a submersible heater in your last post. I still advise you to get one. The water needs to be around 78-80 degrees for a hatchling.
Chris
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Hey whats up, I'm Chris and I currently have 1.0 Softy, 0.0.1 Midland Painted, 1.0 Bearded Dragon

I'll see what I can do about getting a heater. But what about the food situation. I can only get it to eat worms. Mike Excel said he fed it ReptoMin but I am not getting a response from the turtle by turtle food or fish. Last night I tried a new technique with feeding. I picked up the turtle and push in it's arms gently, the turtle then held it's mouth open at me, I put a turtle stick a little in it's mouth and it bit the piece off, I then held the turtle in the water so it could swallow it. Then I did it over again till the turtle stick was gone. I don't know if it ate the stick or spit it out it's hard to tell.
Michael
Michael's Place

The temperature of the water will also affect the metabolism of the turtle, the colder the water the less it will eat. Also remember the size of turtle, if it ate two worms in a week and it is the size of a nickel it might be full. He is a healthy fat little turtle isn’t he? Here is some great Loggerhead info (even though it does not apply to this case) http://www.deancloseprep.gloucs.sch.uk/chelonia/testudo/articles/loggerhead.htm

Also I misinformed you on the food, I was feeding the baby loggerheads ZooMed Hatchling turtle food. If you are willing to pay me the price of shipping I will send you a pound of it free.

I will just go ahead and pay the shipping too, I will mail it out on Monday.

Sounds good to me.
Michael
Michael's Place