Littleredfootbigredheart
Well-Known Member
Hello all! 
I thought I’d write a thread to properly introduce myself, I pretty much jumped straight in with asking questions the day I joined this forum, without so much as a how’d you do
I’m from the UK, in my late twenties, and developed an infatuation with all things tortoises!
It all started with my mom meeting her current partner, he’s the proud owner of a red foot tortoise named squirt, he’d owned her roughly just over ten years(his memory isn’t the best on exactly when he got her, but she was at least 10 when we all met)
For around the first year of knowing squirt, unbeknownst to me at the time, she wasn’t in the best of shape due to quite a few husbandry issues, I don’t really like posting old photos of her out of respect for her owner, I’ve never been able to find a photo of a red foot that quite looked like squirt when we first met! but I will say her owner was just doing everything the pet store he bought her from told him to.. the very pet store who would shut all their heating off at night for all their reptiles, no matter the species, advising to do so with squirt
(we can reach freezing temperatures here), wrong bulbs, all the typical stuff you shouldn’t see. Squirts owner was pretty upset once he realised and only ever did what he thought was right.
I didn’t know what squirts species was nor what she should look like, I didn’t even think to ask lol. I just so happened to start googling tortoise species one night because I realised I’d never asked what kind she was, I was quickly able to identify her as a red foot, but my heart sank when I saw what a healthy one should look like and how undersized she was.. that’s when I fell down the absolute minefield that is the world of outdated tortoise care! Being completely new to it all, I truly struggled to decipher the good from the bad at first.
I did come across this forum early in my searches, though didn’t actually make an account till some years later, which meant I kept looking into other sources online, figuring that’s the smartest thing to do to cover all bases, all it did was cause confusion!
It wasn’t easy because squirts owner was naturally more trusting of what the supposed ‘experts’ advice is, coupled with his own search’s into questionable sources that he felt backed up the care info at the time. Totally understandable.
That would then make me second guess myself, because at the end of the day, it was all new to me.
But I knew something wasn’t right and needed changing, so I stripped back to the basics, cross referenced the best substrate to use, the humidity, giving her soaks, feeding on slate to wear her beak down, got her a ceramic bulb for night, improved her diet and adding her supplements, the change was almost instantaneous! Some things took time, her beak took a bit, but she started to look brighter and brighter!
That gave me enough confidence to know I was doing something right, in my spare time I started reading deeper into stuff, to truly get to the bottom of why certain things just didn’t make sense in terms of care advice. We have a local reptile shop(not the same one squirt is from) and whilst I now see plainly where they’re following some typical outdated stuff, they did have some green flags, like advising the correct uv, floodlights, importance of a closed chamber, things that should all be a given but just isn’t with stores
I’d already thrown myself into a lot of research at this point, so all in all we weren’t doing too badly, but there were definitely still things that didn’t make total sense, minor things really like maintaining the humidity(pretty typical if relying on multiple sources other than the forum for this stuff) when you have folks that appear so on top of their game, advising some information I’d at least been able to determine correct over multiple sources(including the forum), to a newbie like I was, it was hard for me to know for certain who was accurate with what they were saying
Over time I grew more and more fond of reading threads on the forum, everything being said just made so much more sense to me, squirt was already so much healthier and had grown a little bit! Though that did quickly halt due to how small her set up was.
It was quickly dawning on me she would be needing an upgrade, I noticed one day when visiting, that her temperatures looked far too low, I was still very nervous when it came to the technical side of things!
That’s when this wonderful forum truly came in for me! I finally decided to just make an account(best thing I ever did and idk why I didn’t do it sooner) I was finally able to iron out some the nitty gritty details, like how best to utilise her ceramic to make up the ambient temperature(which helped get her temperature back safe), why misting the enclosure isn’t as effective as pouring, uv timings and more!
Things all clicked into place for me, my finale battle was to convince squirts owner of everything, for the most part, I’d gained his trust just from him seeing how much squirt had improved from the changes I’d already suggested. But there were other things that did take time to convince him of. Sizing for example, the place he’d got her from told him she’d be fine in a 6 foot viv full grown, therefore that was the planned upgrade size originally. We all know better here
, we butted heads over her night temps a few times too but eventually we all got on the same page
We all worked our butts off together to give squirt the best possible set up we could and he agreed to let us go much bigger! I do wish we could give even more, truth is we did look into rehome at one time, naively not realising that almost every prospective home here in the UK offer far less than what we could provide. Honestly I’m a firm believer that this species shouldn’t be sold here tbh, our climate makes it impossible to house this big tropical species outside for very long each year
The most important thing is, she’s in the biggest space we could provide, larger than what most folks here can unfortunately, with all her environmental needs being appropriately met and a wonderfully varied diet! She’s been absolutely thriving
This forum helped me gain so much confidence, the amount I’ve learnt since reading up on here is insane! So much so that I really wanted to give back and help where I could in my own little way, I’m someone who is a super visual learner, I wanted to take all the knowledge I’d learnt from both my own research and this forum, and apply it into my own posts with visual references, I started by just pasting my different responses where needed for new members and attaching photos, but it wasn’t really the best approachhence I made my own threads for them not too long ago, I get lots of messages and compliments on them which is really nice
I’m by no stretch of the imagination an ‘expert’ in any way, same can’t be said for some of the longer standing members, who have truly done all the leg work here! To this day there’s the odd occasion I don’t give the right answer, I’d never want that to affect the reliability of this site! I always tag the more experienced members for things I’m not 100% certain, and I try to be as transparent as possible that my hands on experience is no where near what some of these guys have!
I’ve been lucky enough to have some hands on time with my friends Russian&setting up for temperate species, therefore I’m happy advising the basics on Russians, Herman’s etc, I don’t mind talking leopard and sulcata starters because when squirt had a basking floodlight that was the kind of set up I helped maintain, and I’m obviously always happy talking red foots!
I really hope my posts have helped people, I know I’ve not been at this very long, but I’ve put in lots of hours of research and taken help from the experts who have decades of experience on here in creating them, I’ve had lots of positive feedback so far
Sorry that was a long one! Just thought it’d be nice to pin on my profile for anyone interested in taking a gander
Here’s our girl squirt, who is looking rather fantastic these days!!
she even started growing again for the first time in years once we got her into the upgrade, sight that white growth line in some of the pics?
I thought I’d write a thread to properly introduce myself, I pretty much jumped straight in with asking questions the day I joined this forum, without so much as a how’d you do
I’m from the UK, in my late twenties, and developed an infatuation with all things tortoises!
It all started with my mom meeting her current partner, he’s the proud owner of a red foot tortoise named squirt, he’d owned her roughly just over ten years(his memory isn’t the best on exactly when he got her, but she was at least 10 when we all met)
For around the first year of knowing squirt, unbeknownst to me at the time, she wasn’t in the best of shape due to quite a few husbandry issues, I don’t really like posting old photos of her out of respect for her owner, I’ve never been able to find a photo of a red foot that quite looked like squirt when we first met! but I will say her owner was just doing everything the pet store he bought her from told him to.. the very pet store who would shut all their heating off at night for all their reptiles, no matter the species, advising to do so with squirt
(we can reach freezing temperatures here), wrong bulbs, all the typical stuff you shouldn’t see. Squirts owner was pretty upset once he realised and only ever did what he thought was right. I didn’t know what squirts species was nor what she should look like, I didn’t even think to ask lol. I just so happened to start googling tortoise species one night because I realised I’d never asked what kind she was, I was quickly able to identify her as a red foot, but my heart sank when I saw what a healthy one should look like and how undersized she was.. that’s when I fell down the absolute minefield that is the world of outdated tortoise care! Being completely new to it all, I truly struggled to decipher the good from the bad at first.
I did come across this forum early in my searches, though didn’t actually make an account till some years later, which meant I kept looking into other sources online, figuring that’s the smartest thing to do to cover all bases, all it did was cause confusion!
It wasn’t easy because squirts owner was naturally more trusting of what the supposed ‘experts’ advice is, coupled with his own search’s into questionable sources that he felt backed up the care info at the time. Totally understandable.
That would then make me second guess myself, because at the end of the day, it was all new to me.
But I knew something wasn’t right and needed changing, so I stripped back to the basics, cross referenced the best substrate to use, the humidity, giving her soaks, feeding on slate to wear her beak down, got her a ceramic bulb for night, improved her diet and adding her supplements, the change was almost instantaneous! Some things took time, her beak took a bit, but she started to look brighter and brighter!
That gave me enough confidence to know I was doing something right, in my spare time I started reading deeper into stuff, to truly get to the bottom of why certain things just didn’t make sense in terms of care advice. We have a local reptile shop(not the same one squirt is from) and whilst I now see plainly where they’re following some typical outdated stuff, they did have some green flags, like advising the correct uv, floodlights, importance of a closed chamber, things that should all be a given but just isn’t with stores
I’d already thrown myself into a lot of research at this point, so all in all we weren’t doing too badly, but there were definitely still things that didn’t make total sense, minor things really like maintaining the humidity(pretty typical if relying on multiple sources other than the forum for this stuff) when you have folks that appear so on top of their game, advising some information I’d at least been able to determine correct over multiple sources(including the forum), to a newbie like I was, it was hard for me to know for certain who was accurate with what they were sayingOver time I grew more and more fond of reading threads on the forum, everything being said just made so much more sense to me, squirt was already so much healthier and had grown a little bit! Though that did quickly halt due to how small her set up was.
It was quickly dawning on me she would be needing an upgrade, I noticed one day when visiting, that her temperatures looked far too low, I was still very nervous when it came to the technical side of things!
That’s when this wonderful forum truly came in for me! I finally decided to just make an account(best thing I ever did and idk why I didn’t do it sooner) I was finally able to iron out some the nitty gritty details, like how best to utilise her ceramic to make up the ambient temperature(which helped get her temperature back safe), why misting the enclosure isn’t as effective as pouring, uv timings and more!
Things all clicked into place for me, my finale battle was to convince squirts owner of everything, for the most part, I’d gained his trust just from him seeing how much squirt had improved from the changes I’d already suggested. But there were other things that did take time to convince him of. Sizing for example, the place he’d got her from told him she’d be fine in a 6 foot viv full grown, therefore that was the planned upgrade size originally. We all know better here
, we butted heads over her night temps a few times too but eventually we all got on the same pageWe all worked our butts off together to give squirt the best possible set up we could and he agreed to let us go much bigger! I do wish we could give even more, truth is we did look into rehome at one time, naively not realising that almost every prospective home here in the UK offer far less than what we could provide. Honestly I’m a firm believer that this species shouldn’t be sold here tbh, our climate makes it impossible to house this big tropical species outside for very long each year
The most important thing is, she’s in the biggest space we could provide, larger than what most folks here can unfortunately, with all her environmental needs being appropriately met and a wonderfully varied diet! She’s been absolutely thriving
This forum helped me gain so much confidence, the amount I’ve learnt since reading up on here is insane! So much so that I really wanted to give back and help where I could in my own little way, I’m someone who is a super visual learner, I wanted to take all the knowledge I’d learnt from both my own research and this forum, and apply it into my own posts with visual references, I started by just pasting my different responses where needed for new members and attaching photos, but it wasn’t really the best approach
hence I made my own threads for them not too long ago, I get lots of messages and compliments on them which is really niceI’m by no stretch of the imagination an ‘expert’ in any way, same can’t be said for some of the longer standing members, who have truly done all the leg work here! To this day there’s the odd occasion I don’t give the right answer, I’d never want that to affect the reliability of this site! I always tag the more experienced members for things I’m not 100% certain, and I try to be as transparent as possible that my hands on experience is no where near what some of these guys have!
I’ve been lucky enough to have some hands on time with my friends Russian&setting up for temperate species, therefore I’m happy advising the basics on Russians, Herman’s etc, I don’t mind talking leopard and sulcata starters because when squirt had a basking floodlight that was the kind of set up I helped maintain, and I’m obviously always happy talking red foots!
I really hope my posts have helped people, I know I’ve not been at this very long, but I’ve put in lots of hours of research and taken help from the experts who have decades of experience on here in creating them, I’ve had lots of positive feedback so far
Sorry that was a long one! Just thought it’d be nice to pin on my profile for anyone interested in taking a gander
Here’s our girl squirt, who is looking rather fantastic these days!!
she even started growing again for the first time in years once we got her into the upgrade, sight that white growth line in some of the pics?
