A picture is worth a thousand words... You are missing two of the essential heating and lighting elements. Ambient temperature control and ambient lighting. During this time of year, and especially in cooler climates like yours, you need to make it look and feel like summer in the enclosure if you don't want the tortoise to start brumating in August. Here is a breakdown of the four heating and lighting essentials:
- Basking bulb. I use 65 watt incandescent floods from the hardware store. Some people will need bigger, or smaller wattage bulbs. Let your thermometer be your guide. I run them on a timer for about 12 hours and adjust the height to get the correct basking temp under them. I also like to use a flat rock of some sort directly under the bulb. You need to check the temp with a thermometer directly under the bulb and get it to around 95-100F (36-37C).
- Ambient heat maintenance. I use ceramic heating elements or radiant heat panels set on thermostats to maintain ambient above 80 degrees day and night for tropical species. In most cases you'd only need day heat for a temperate species like Testudo or DT, as long as your house stays above 60F (15-16C) at night. Some people in colder climates or with larger enclosures will need multiple CHEs or RHPs to spread out enough heat.
- Ambient light. I use LEDs for this purpose. Something in the 5000-6500K color range will look the best. Most bulbs at the store are in the 2500K range and they look yellowish. Strip or screw-in LED bulb types are both fine.
- UV. If you can get your tortoise outside for an hour 2 or 3 times a week, you won't need indoor UV. In colder climates, get one of the newer HO type fluorescent tubes. Which type will depend on mounting height. 5.0 bulbs make almost no UV. I like the 12% HO bulbs from Arcadia. You need a meter to check this: https://www.solarmeter.com/model65.htmlA good UV bulb only needs to run for 2-3 hours mid day. You need the basking bulb and the ambient lighting to be on at least 12 hours a day.
Three more issues with your set up:
1. This first one is really a three part problem. A) The UV tube needs to be mounted over the center of the enclosure, near the heat lamp, and not on the side of the enclosure. B) Depending on what tube that is, it might be too close. C) The UV tube should only be on for a few hours mid day. It appears you are using it all day long for ambient light. That's not ideal. If you were to reset the UV tube's timer and only run it a few hours mid day, then it will be much too dim in the morning and evening.
2. That water bowl isn't suitable. It's too hard for a tortoise to navigate. A terra cotta saucer sunk into the substrate will work much better. They work great for food too, and I like to have extras on hand in case I break one.
3. You bought coco "fiber" substrate. See all those little hair-like fibers? That's no good. They will eat those and it can block them up, which would cause the symptoms you are seeing. Lethargy and lack of appetite. I like coco coir for baby Testudo, but you need to find the type without all those fibers.
I agree with the other posters about too much calcium and vitamins. With a variety of weeds and leaves in the diet, you probably don't need much supplementation at all. I agree with their advice of a small amount of vitamin powder mixed in to the food once a week, and once or twice a week for calcium powder. This routine should be good even if you shift to more grocery store greens over the winter.
More info here in these two threads. Questions are welcome.
Info For New People. Please Read This First.
Hello and welcome to tortoiseforum.org! We are all glad you are here! There is no other forum like this anywhere. We have tens of thousands of members from all over the world ranging from kids with their first tortoise to people who have been breeding and keeping high end tortoises since the...
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The Best Way To Raise Any Temperate Species Of Tortoise
I chose the title of this care sheet very carefully. Are there other ways to raise babies and care for adults? Yes. Yes there are, but those ways are not as good. What follows is the BEST way, according to 30 years of research and experimentation with hundreds of babies of many species. What is...
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