Recent content by Tom

This thread is 12 years old. Those pics are gone. If you look at the post above yours in this thread, I've left a link for the most current version.

Hello and welcome. What have you got?

Is this what the vet said, or is this your take on what is happening?

No. Definitely not. They need regular mineralized water for drinking and soaking. Just use distilled, or collected rainwater, or RO water for the spraying and rinsing. I am on well water with high mineral content. After a soak, I simply rinse my tortoises with a sprayer filled with rainwater...

Hello and welcome. Those look like hard water stains. Do you rinse after soaking with demineralized water? Do you spray the tortoise frequently? Your tortoise is pyramiding. You need to change the way it is being housed ASAP to keep it from getting worse. Start here and look for the sulcata...

When you said "experiment" I was hoping you were going to do a long term feeding trial with groups of clutch mates. One group with the crumbles and one group without... Oh well...

Outdoors all day is not good for babies. Climate and weather don't matter and this is true even in their native ranges. They do much better when housed mostly indoors in a large closed chamber with controlled conditions.

There is seasonal variation through most of the range of the leopard tortoise. There is no more babcocki. Its all one species now. No sub species. There are 11 clades all over the enormous range. This species and all its various forms ranges from Somalia and Ethiopia in the North all the way...

I think Barb's observation is pretty typical of what I have seen too. Some of them slow down, and some of them don't. They definitely notice cooler temps and shorter days, so its important to make sure your temps are kept up and your lights are good and bright, and set for the correct times.

The coir itself won't mold or support fungal growth. There has to be something organic on it or in it for that to grow like that. Probably best to chuck it and start over, or soak it in a bucket to leach out the organic material, and then let it mostly dry out before putting it back in the...

I would choose one of these that I've been trying to sell since May. Some are well over 100 grams now. https://tortoiseforum.org/threads/2023-burmese-star-babies-for-sale.205589/

You have to grow those foods or scrounge them. Or both. You can use grocery store foods too, but favor the better ones and add in some good amendments to them. All of that is explained in the two threads. Questions are welcome.

Topsoil is made from composted yard waste. There is no way to know what is is in it. Could be azaleas, oleander, recently sprayed grass clippings... Could be anything. There are also chunks of glass, plastic, nails, and whatever else falls into the mix. In addition, they add all sorts of weird...

No they are not bad for tortoises. That is an old persistent myth. Me and several other experienced members here have started 1000s of babies in glass tanks. The problem with glass tanks is that they are too small for anything but a baby. Large open tortoise tables can work for adult Testudo if...

Several problems are immediately obvious. I say these things to help you. I don't want you to feel insulted or belittled. No one is born knowing this stuff, and if nobody tells you what is wrong, you can't fix it. Tortoises should NEVER live as pairs. Russians are probably number one on this...