Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Please take a look at my adopted 3 toe's shell. I believe she is a female and am concerned about her carapace. I suspect pyramiding from what I've read. It looks odd to me because it is shorter than the plastron. If those of you with more experience would take a look and comment I would appreciate it. I have never had a 3 toe before so I appreciate any advice.

Is there anything else I should do? How high should the humidity be on the humid side? I've read care sheets that
have stated 20% while others have said 40% and one said 80%. How
much of their diets should be insects? I have read 40% on some care sheets while others stated up to 80% for this as well.

Background: I was given this turtle and a smaller male, I believe, from a teenager. They were kept in a rubbermaid tub on woodchips with a heat lamp and UVB
fluorescent. They were primarily fed lettuce, tomato, and Rep-Cal Box turtle pellets. Mostly lettuce and tomato though. She had them about 2.5 years for the female and 2 years for the male. They had a water dish that was big enough for one to soak in at a time.

I have demited them and have them both eating superworms and
redworms with zest. I have them on a soil - peat moss substrate
with a hide box. I have been soaking them as often as I can. They have lost the ends of their tails due to incomplete sheds drying out and cutting off the circulation to their tails. I removed as much of the incomplete sheds as I could, and was
able to save some of their tails. The dead portion has fallen on
the male, but the female still has a portion that is hanging.

Thanks again,
Angela

That's not pyramidding. Basically, the shell just looks too small for the body. I'd suspect that the original enclosure wasn't humid enough, in addition to some problems with the diet.

Keep the substrate damp to the touch, at least at one end, and make it deep enough to dig in up to the top of the shell. If you have damp, "diggable" substrate, and the turtle can soak 24/7 as he or she sees fit, I wouldn't worry as much about humidity. You might want to try artificial silk plants as hide spots, too. Makes the enclosure looks nice, and gives them more hiding choices while still getting some UVB from the lights while feeling hiden.

I'd keep the male and female seperate, unless you're certain the male can't mount the female. I'd worry about potential egg binding problems in the female. It could happen without a male, but is more likely to happen with a male.

Katrina

Thank you very much for the response. I appreciate your help. I'm just trying to get them comfortable and take good care of them and wasn't sure ehat to make of her shell. Thanks again.

I see some curling of the carapace in the back which tells me this may be a form of metabolic bone disease, aka MBD. Poor nutrition & lack of sunlight are basically the cause of that disease.
As long as this turtle has a corrected diet today and stays on the proper diet for the rest of it's life, gets enough UV/B (& in summer there is no better way to provide that than to have a walk in the sun several times a week) ... as long as care is corrected now then MBD will correct itself over time.
With a new adoptee that's showing signs of previous improper care if it were mine what I would do very soon is have it evaluated by a reptile vet.. that's something I do with all my new pets anyway. If there is MBD happening now then a vet can get you closer to wellness very quickly right now.

Pyramiding is very different looking from MBD, and although the cause of pyramiding is not really understood... the most recent theories on it are that diet and lack of water may be the cause. That makes sense to me because I find pyramided box turtles fairly often. I live in the desert the wild ones don't get much water to drink.
Here's a photo of one of mine found with pyramiding & then I'll paste on a photo of my sulcata who was also found, her pyramiding was very obvious when she was found & this photo is how she looked the day she got here, pitiful.

This is Shell E & Charity together. Charity is the larger one & you can kind of see how her carapace is a bit lumpy in person you can REALLY see it... & then you can see how majoryly lumpy the sulcata looked when she first got here

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PHRatz