Posted by:
kensopher
at Tue Oct 24 07:07:18 2006 [ Report Abuse ] [ Email Message ] [ Show All Posts by kensopher ]
I'm probably more hesitant than I should be, but I'm so reserved about offering information regarding medications. Thank goodness for Chris and JG! Both of their suggestions are great!
Like Chris, I've used over the counter medications for fungal spot treatments. My three-toed box turtles are horribly succeptible to fungal shell infections. Basically, anything with the suffix -azole is useful as an antifungal. About a week of daily spot treatments on the areas usually takes care of it.
JG is right about the fish related medications...they are formulated to be very safe. This would probably be your best bet if the turtles don't take favorably to dry docking. As shy as mine are, I can imagine that it'll be difficult to get them to eat after the stress of being out of water all day and night.
As you can tell, I love blackwater extract. Certain turtles really seem to do better with constantly acidic water. When I was a kid and kept my Spotted turtles, I'd walk 1/4 mile to my neighborhood lake with two 5 gallon buckets to get water for their little pond. The water was tannin-stained and acidic...we called it cedar water. Now, I can virtually create the same water with a simple drive to the pet store. Euro ponds are habitat generalists, like Spotted turtles. However, their morphology, swimming ability, and desire to hide in vegetation makes me think that they prefer heavily vegetated bodies of water...those are normally more acidic.
Does anyone know about the relationship between water acidity and shell pitting? I've never had a problem with pitting, but I've been told that keeping turtles in acidic water can create the problem.
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