Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Hi, I put my 2 baby 3-toed box turles in a glass tank inside. I have a heating pad at side of glass and a UVB light above.

However,the thing is they just bury them into the mulch.I never saw them walking around the tank. Is that normal?

One problem is when I leave earthworm or supperworm in the tank, and they don't show up.Later on, those earthworm or supperworm just walk away and hide into the mulch too.

I don' know if my turtle can find those earhworm and eat them when I am not watching or not.

One another problem is the earthworm/superworm is bringing ants into the tank, which is really scared.

Please advise.

Thanks

Tony

baby boxies are programmed to hide, mainly to aviod predation. You might try feeding them in a seperate smaller plastic container, and leave them in a quite, undisturbed place in your home and walk away and leave them alone, check back in an hour, hopefully food will be gone. Plus that way your cage stays clean and free of dead rotten worms that attract ants. Also if you give them a soak in a several container from their cage the day before feeding they will likely poop and be ready to eat the next day plus the poop isn't in the living quarters cage, again keeping it cleaner. hope this helps and good luck
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Jeff Benfer
gartersnakemorph.com

meant to say seperate container not several.....that didn't make any sense, lol.
Also is the heat pad on the side of the tank? it needs to be under the tank.
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Jeff Benfer
gartersnakemorph.com

I put the heating pad underneath the tank yesterday.
The tank is much warmer now.
They still hide and not eat anything.

Sigh.

How small are your three-toeds? new-borns?
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Least favorite quotation: "These foul and loathesome animals are abhorrant because of their cold body, pale color, cartilaginous skeleton, filthy skin, fierce aspect, calculating eye, offensive smell, harsh voice, squalid habitation, and terrible venom; and so their Creator has not exerted his powers to make many of them." - Carolus Linnaeus

I really don't know how old they are.
One is about 2", another one is a little bit smaller.

They still don't eat.

I put them into another container for a while. They just stay at corner and try to get away.

I am really worried.

Get some small 1/8 or 1/4 inch crickets and dust them with repti-cal. The idea is to make them more visible and to slow them down some. I have had great success with my little turtles. They seem to like the movement of a crawling bug. I put a little repi-cal in a plastic bag and then dump in several crickets shake them up a bit so that it coats them with the dust and it also dis-orients them so that they dont jump and crawl around too fast. It seems to work better if you have some darker substrate. Good luck

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Vichris
"The object of life is not to be on the side of the majority but to escape finding oneself in the ranks of the insane"- Marcus Aurelius

At that size, my three-toed ate earthworms just fine. That's my suggestion. Put the worms and the turtle in the same containter together - that way the turtle won't lose the worms.
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Least favorite quotation: "These foul and loathesome animals are abhorrant because of their cold body, pale color, cartilaginous skeleton, filthy skin, fierce aspect, calculating eye, offensive smell, harsh voice, squalid habitation, and terrible venom; and so their Creator has not exerted his powers to make many of them." - Carolus Linnaeus

I also have had some that did not want to eat... main thing is keeping them hydrated.... What I do is plug the sink, put in a little water and let the soak every day for about 30 min.. I also put in small worms... they will eat when they get hungry and they do like seeing the movement... soaking in the water will allow them to drink and the soaking is good... good luck... let us know

1) Yes, as someone else mentioned, hiding is natural for the younger turtles. When they get bigger/older they will be more visible.
2) Your babies might be eating, but just not when you're watching. They will go after the critters [like meal worms] that get away and burrow. The first couple of years that I over-wintered my babies indoors, I kept their habitat stocked with pill bugs.

In addition to the advice everyone else has given, you might try getting a [postal] scale and weighing them periodically to be sure they are gaining weight.

Thanks.
Now, they are eating now.
The larger one just eat all meatworm and earthworm as soon as I drop them.
But smaller one is quite shy. I have to put her( I guess) into a seperate container with mulch so her to hide.
After 1 or 2 hours, the worms are gone.