Reptile & Amphibian Forums

i have three yearling ast's and they include, a common ast, a hypo ast and, a pig tailed ast. the common and the hypo are developing nicely albiet a little flat on top of the shell but the pig tailed ast has started to saddle pretty badly is there any way to stop this or correct it. their diet is all the same between the three of them, it includes guppies and aquatic turtle pellets made by zoo med. it is a growth formula that contains 35% protein 5.0% fat 5.0% fiber 1.0% phosphorus 10.0% ash and 11.0% moisture. i also add crickets and krill occationaly. i have hear that to produce pig tailed snapper you fluctuate the incubation temperatures of the eggs and this causes the spine to grow at accelerated and decreased rates causing the "pig tail" to develop i dont know if this is true or false but im curious as to weather or not this could be the cause of my pig tailed ast to be saddleing so badly. could this be the case? does anybody else on here have any pig tailed ast's? if so any input would be greatly appreciated. thanks in advance.

Please ad some pics so we could take a look at the "saddleing" thats occuring. Its hard to determain the problem with out pics...

unfortunately i dont have a digital camera so i cant post pic's at this time. i know this dosent help any im sorry but i was just wondering if anyone else had noticed this problem

All the juvenile pig-tailed AST's I've seen had oddly shaped shells; I don't know if you could classify this as saddling, but they showed some signs of scoliosis and were generally much smaller than their littermates. These pig-tails were not deliberately produced; I don't know how you would go about deliberately producing this effect, or why you would want to.