A little background info...

I'm the Naturalist at the Las Cruces Museum of Natural History. I care for approximately 40 species of herps native to NM or the Chihuahuan Desert. One such animal is a roughly 14-15 y.o. male common snapper. I moved to the area in 1995 when my father was stationed at a nearby air force base; this particular turtle has been here since at least that time. Currently he's around 13 lbs. with a shell length of about 11 inches (these stats are from a year ago, annual measurements again in 2 weeks).

The last month he's developed small sores near the tip of his tail, on the bottom of his feet, and 1 on his lower jaw where his beak meets skin. I'm not too worried about these as they can be treated (our vet was recently here). However, my overall concern is his filtration and actual habitat -- between improving it and his treatment that should solve the sores. He currently lives in a 125 gal tank filled about half way with water and a substrate of filter media, medium sized aquarium gravel and large rocks (this subtrate combined with the water quality, or lack-there-of, is what I think has caused these sores). A pond pump is used to pump water into an emperor dual bio-wheel filtration unit (not running due to water level) and the filter pads are cleaned once a week. Diet, for years, has consisted of mice and various feeder fish. Mice are offered once a week and I removed him off of feeder fish due to our spiny softshells getting tapeworm from them (only source I can think of as the tapeworm hasn't returned since I took our turtles off the fish).

We're set to move into a new location as early as late next year which will allow me to upgrade his habitat size, but what can I do for now? Filtration wise I can't bring the water level up high enough to use a canister setup (at least to my knowledge - our softshell tanks currently run Fluval 305s and 405s). FWIW we are supposedly hitting budget freeze possibly next week. Our new fiscal year begins July 1, which will allow me to start making improvements to his habitat. I'm no stranger to keeping snappers, just not ones this large yet.

Chris Newsom
Naturalist
Las Cruces Museum of Natural History

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