Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Hello,

Recently, a turtle was dropped into my hands. It's about 8" total length and was in a 10 gallon tank. The person said it was a red eared slider. So, I've dropped the turtle in a large rubbermaid container where it can actually turn around and swim a little now and proceeded to do some research. This turtle looked nothing like any red eared I have seen before, and looks just like a southern painted like this one here:

http://www.fs.fed.us/oonf/cons_ed/red_slough/redslough/reptiles/reptiles1/pages/southernpaintedturtle01_jpg.htm

Primarily I am concerned about two things, his eating habits and the condition of his shell.

He was being fed nothing but the turtle pellets, so I thought I'd introduce some real food. The only thing this guy will touch now is chicken breast. I'm just wondering how I can ensure he gets some vitamins in his diet when the only way he'll eat is if you drop the food into his water. Sure, I can powder the chicken before I toss it in, but as soon as it hits the water they'll wash off. I did read something about the aquatic plants in this forum so may try that myself real soon.

His shell had bits of gravel stuck in it that needed to be picked out and a few spots on the underneath portion of the shell look as if it may be the beginning of some sort of fungus or rot. The spots are fairly tiny, but want to get them taken care of before they become bigger problems. Much of the information I've read on how to deal with injuries is conflicting and varied, and not targeted to these turtles specifically. I was hopeing someone might have an idea of how these injuries would best be treated. The spots are smaller in diameter than a pencil. Currently, I'm using a triple-antibiotic ointment and let it soak in for about 30 minutes to an hour before I wipe off the excess and place him back into his tank.

He doesn't act sick at all, and his energy levels are great. He loves going for walks outside in the sun and soaking in his water. So, whatever his diet or shell troubles may be, he still is quite spunky which is a good sign.

I wish my camera had not broken so I could take a picture of his shell. Sorry.

Any advice is appreciated,

Thanks.

Is there anyway you can post a picture. Are you sure it
is a water turtle. If it is it needs a large water area
with an area big enough to bask. Turtle pellets are OK
they are pretty complete but add some dark leaf lettuce,
ie: romaine, turnip greens. You can also give a little
fruit. Mine love slices of banana and strawberries.

Hope this helps

to fix the diet, start getting it eating in a separate container. This will help you later in many ways:

1) cleanliness: it's easier to keep the tank clean
2) monitoring it's diet: so you can see how well it's eating
3) training turtle to know the bin is feeding time, so it eats new things more readily

I just use a rubbermaid tub of some sort, big enough to put several inches of water into (the painteds have to eat underwater), then add food and turtle.

I would feed it once with what you know it will eat, then NEVER offer it again until it's eating other things regularly. Put the feeding bin in a calm quiet place and leave the turtle alone for 20 minutes. Then come back and put it in it's home tank even if it has not eaten. Offer feeding every other day for 20 minutes like this and eventually it will catch on.

Offer all kinds of whole fish, crayfish, fruits and veggies, insects, etc. Cooked chicken breast is okay, but is basically only protien. Whole fish and crayfish with shell, insects, etc, offer a more whole food.

Well, I didn't know about the painteds having to eat while in the water so that could make a difference. I will try again with more fruits and veggies tomorrow since I fed him yesterday and see what happens. He does love his water and hates not to be in it. When I take him out to apply the ointment to his shell, he freaks out being in the dry tank. I hope it heals soon so I can stop stressing him out so much. I've started to cover the dry tank with a dark cloth and he calms down much faster.

As another odd question, how much food is considered a good amount to eat? On the pellets, ReptoMin for aquatic turtles, he'd eat about 3-4 every other day or so. The chicken he'll eat what would be about 1 bite for one of my kids. I will have to see how he responds to the fruits and veggies still.

Got to love it when people think because you know about one reptile to know about them all. Whee! Ahh, but I'm a sucker.

~L~

he can be fed an amount of food about the size of his head and do fine.

Later on you will want to balance his feeding with his weight maintenance (after he's healthy). At this point you'll likely feed 3 or fewer times per week in smaller amounts of meat items, and leave plenty of aquatic plants in his pond for grazing on non-feeding days.

Well, the little guy still isn't eating anything else, but will keep trying other things till I find out what he'll take. He sniffs the stuff out, but isn't interested. That's more than he was doing before. I'll hit the nursery or other garden supply over the weekend and look for the aquatic plants. Apparently, buying them over the computer requires some permit that adds another $25 to the order. Uhh, not for a couple little $2 plants.

The shell still concerns me. While the ointment has helped clear up a large number of the small spots (pencil lead or smaller in size- the brown spots softened and came right out with a light going over with a toothbrush), the deeper ones aren't making any improvement and I think they may even be getting worse since he barked at me when I was doing a light scraping out the wound (nothing came out, it's still too hard) before I put fresh goo on him. I'm going to try the betadine or nolvasan next. I'll probably just go with the Nolvasan since I've heard far better results with it.

However, it does look as if he is trying to shed the bottom portion of the shell. Does anyone think I should move him to a dry tank for a portion of the day to help with this process? Whenever he gets wet again, the flakes kind of paste themselves back to the shell. I notice the flakes when I dry him off to put on the medicine. From my understanding this is a sign of healing and is a good thing?

If I don't see anymore improvement after the Nolvasan, I'll take the little guy to the vet. I think they might have to cut out the little bad spots and I just can't see doing something like that myself. It's only about 4 spots, all smaller than a pencil in width. But, they obviously hurt if he's barking at me.

The biggest spot is 2mm wide and 4mm long. It is kind of brownish in color on those spots, not soft, pussy or smelly and look as if they were started from the unknown road rash I had mentioned before. The bottom of his shell is scuffed like he either walked down a gravel road for a long time or was used in a game of street hockey.

I suppose that's all for now. This is after one week of treatment by the way. I'm not sure how long I can expect those more severe spots to take to heal.

~Laura~

Here's some pics. Not the greatest since I had to use my webcam, but you get the idea.

http://www.geocities.com/ravenstarr.geo/index.html