Hi everyone,
I have a ~13 year old painted turtle rescue that I’ve had around 8 years now. He is a male Easter painted. For the past few nights I have noticed that he will spend several hours at the surface making a gulping gesture, but only at night once the lights are off.
During the day, he acts completely normally. He eats well, basks normally, and swims with no buoyancy issues or tilt at all, he can submerge/float at will. He also doesn’t have any mucus or anything else indicating RI.
For enclosure info, he is in a 75gallon with a thrive basking loft. Water is kept at 76F with a water heater and has basking, 5.0uvb, powerful canister filter, weekly 5 gal water changes.
He gets fed Mazuri, Hikari wheat germ, soldier fly larvae, tubifex worms, carrots, bok choy, shrimp, tons of duckweed, hornwort, and occasionally he can snack on romaine for enrichment.
I can’t figure out how to attach a video but here is a link to a Reddit post I made about the same thing:
I have a ~13 year old painted turtle rescue that I’ve had around 8 years now. He is a male Easter painted. For the past few nights I have noticed that he will spend several hours at the surface making a gulping gesture, but only at night once the lights are off.
During the day, he acts completely normally. He eats well, basks normally, and swims with no buoyancy issues or tilt at all, he can submerge/float at will. He also doesn’t have any mucus or anything else indicating RI.
For enclosure info, he is in a 75gallon with a thrive basking loft. Water is kept at 76F with a water heater and has basking, 5.0uvb, powerful canister filter, weekly 5 gal water changes.
He gets fed Mazuri, Hikari wheat germ, soldier fly larvae, tubifex worms, carrots, bok choy, shrimp, tons of duckweed, hornwort, and occasionally he can snack on romaine for enrichment.
I can’t figure out how to attach a video but here is a link to a Reddit post I made about the same thing:
