Their diet for YEARS now has been solely the sticks, whatever they are called, but they are not vitamin fortified with A for certain.

Actually, my Vet said she thought they were Vitamin A deficient - and I went and got this Herpavite powder that uses Beta Carotene which can convert to A but cannot cause toxicity, if I understand it correctly. I've been taking their food sticks and wetting them and letting some of the powder soak into the sticks and making sure it gets absorbed before feeding them.

I will stop the fish thing then. They sure seemed to enjoy them though...

I'm starting to dry dock her tonight, as the admin from the redearedslider.com forum suggested.

Her wound is open and bleeding again and I don't think it will stop unless I dry dock her at least overnight for a while - or maybe even permanently until she heals???

Historically, they shed very little scales or scutes or what do you call them, which I found suspicious.


As for the frequency of this biting, it seems like it picked up considerably in the past year or two, to the point where I'd have to physically do something to get the male to release his death grip on the skin on her neck.

They used to just spend a lot of time together actually, with the male lounging on top of the female on the dock I had that used suction cups, until for whatever reason I removed that (I think it was because it became a nuisance because the suction cups stopped working and it just floated around).

I don't know what changed or why. I do know I need to get the basking light going again tomorrow if possible though. I have new docks and she readily climbed on one of them, so I guess she's still interested. I do need to get the triple antibiotic lotion on them, although this admin guy thought they were usually prescribed. My vet just prescribed the injected antibiotic and the localized betadine swabbing. But she's bleeding and she needs more than the vet suggested.

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