zoologymajor
Member
hey everyone, this is my first time posting here, so please bear with me! i have some pretty specific questions about caring for my juvenile russian tortoise, and i've spent hours reading threads on here, from the pinned care sheets to hyper-specific situational questions, yet i'm still a bit confused. i've also searched the web some, but lots of people here say that popular online advice can actually be really harmful and outdated, so i wanted to ask people with credible knowledge and experience (i also asked some questions in r/tortoise, but they sent me here hehe).
i will give some brief info at the beginning, list my questions, and then provide further backstory/context at the end if you want to read that part. thank you so much in advance for your help <3
my tortoise is a ~5-to-6-year-old juvenile male russian about 5 inches in diameter living in middle tennessee. he spent most of his life indoors, and then the past year or so in an enclosure in the garage, and then last weekend he moved into an outdoor enclosure i built for him. however, he suffered an injury and is now back in his garage enclosure while he's healing after visiting an exotic vet. TRIGGER WARNING: the backstory/context below my questions contains information about his injury and how he got it, so if you don't want to read about that part, please skip it.
question 1: what uva/uvb is best for him? i know he needs uvb, and it wasn't an issue when he got plenty of sunlight, but now i want to make sure it's absolutely perfect to help his healing process go as well as it can while he's indoors. some places have info about uva/uvb, but i've seen on this forum that uva is just a marketing scheme??? but also, uva and uvb are two different wavelengths, so i'm confused how that's a marketing scheme? anyways, this is the bulb/lamp he currently has, with 50 watts and 120 volts: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0DZBK2KQG?tag=exoticpetnetw-20 but it doesn't say anywhere on the listing or the packaging what % uva/uvb it is. he also has this 50 watt halogen basking bulb: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B000KHBT12?tag=exoticpetnetw-20 in a ceramic lamp, so together they make the warm side 90-100 degrees farenheit, and the vet said 90-95 was best for his immune system right now (lowering one to increase the temperature would reduce the % of his enclosure covered by light, and the vet said around 70% of the enclosure should be covered by the lamp, so i am just using both of them together for right now). then, at night, he has this non-light-emitting heating lamp: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0DR2HPR9P?tag=exoticpetnetw-20 . am i doing okay with heating/lighting? humidity isn't an issue except for a few weeks of the year because it's tennessee and he's not in air conditioning. the vet said not to let it fall below 40%, which it almost never does anyways, but i have one of my mom's old essential oil diffusers that i just put water in for when it gets too try, and i just put it next to/in/right above his enclosure. right now it's consistently between 60-80% humidity. but also, he's a desert tortoise, so that's a bit confusing to me as well. sorry this question ended up being much more of a wall of text than i meant for it to be!!!
question 2: are there any tricks to getting him to eat/how much is normal for him to eat? he's not really been eating the past few days which is concerning on its own but also problematic because his medicine is recommended to be taken with food. i've offered him pellets ( https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0002DHPBC?tag=exoticpetnetw-20 and https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00OV0WH74?tag=exoticpetnetw-20 ), foraged weeds (plantain, clover, dandelion, and fescue, with flowers, leaves, and stems, all cut up into small pieces and rinsed in water), and veggies cut up into tiny bits and rinsed in water (celery stems and leaves, cucumber, and baby carrots), all with supplements sprinkled over top ( https://www.amazon.com/dp/B094DB6F63?tag=exoticpetnetw-20 and this one my vet sold me: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0D82DPB1D?tag=exoticpetnetw-20 ), but i've yet to see him eat any of it or notice any of it gone. he's walked over it, looked at it, maybe even opened and closed his mouth, but not eaten. i've read that offering him sugary fruits could work but that it's really bad for him so i'm scared to do that. i have seen him take long drinks of water, though. over the years, i've seen him eat, but a very little bit at a time, which made sense to me since he's so small, but i want to make sure that's normal. i've fed him lettuce, cabbage, kale, and spinach before (in moderation since i know those aren't great for them), and he ate those, but, again, i don't want to give him anything that could be bad for him right now. i've offered him cut-up strawberry and watermelon in the past too but he wasn't interested. i just really want him to eat and would rather him not have to go through the potential trauma of a feeding tube
question 3: is there any way or possibility at all to promote scute regeneration? i've read that they can grow back but also that they can't. the vet said in his experience they never do, but that my baby at least has his youth going for him. so is there anything you guys know of that i could do to increase the chance that they might grow back? and if they don't, is there something i can do for him or give to him to stand in for the scutes? kind of like a disability aid? because i know scutes are an important protective keratin layer for tortoises, so it seems like it would be problematic for him to be missing any, but they may not grow back on their own??
okay, i'm sorry if this is too long to read, i just want to give you guys all the context you may need to answer these because your help means the world to me so here's some more background:
i got my tortoise from a petsmart or petco (i don't remember which) in florida when i was 15 in 2020. i know that's a horrible place to get tortoises and they don't know much about them, and i definitely regret how i cared for him in those first few months, but i can't change it. all i can control is the future, and every time i learn something i could be doing better, i change. anyways, they didn't know how old he was or what sex he was. they guessed about 6-8 months and said i'd have to wait till he was older to sex him. i did some research, and based on the v-shape of his anal scutes and pointiness of his tail, i'm pretty sure he's male (and the vet agreed).
he's had an indoor enclosure for the past 1-2 years made of solid wood walls/flooring so he can't see through it or climb out. it's 4 feet by 2 feet, which is i know is less than the minimum 8 feet by 4 feet, but it was the best i could do for him at the time. there was a reptile carpet in the bottom covered by reptile substrate and pellets. he had a rock for basking on, shallow food and water dishes, and some enrichments/decorations like a little bridge thingy and half of a fake log thing (sorry idk the technical terms for these lol).
but i learned more and knew he needed better, and that, ultimately, outdoors is ideal, so i built him an outdoor enclosure. it's about 23 feet by 12 feet with a 1-foot dig guard around the perimeter made of metal roofing sheets. the above-ground perimeter is made of cinder blocks on three sides and the side of my house on the fourth, which is made of brick. i also created a deep-shade hide for him against the side of my house using more of those metal sheets across the top, weighed down with bricks, and i closed in either side with bricks and the opening with more metal sheets, leaving a wide space for him to get inside without bumping the metal or the cinder blocks. there are 3 large bushes inside it and a couple trees outside of the enclosure that provide shade over it, but still a couple gaps for direct sunlight where i put several large rocks. there was already fescue growing there, and i planted some clover and dandelion from elsewhere in the yard. i put 3 different water dishes and his pellets + supplements in his food dish, but again he had some plants in there he could forage on. the substrate is just the ground. i didn't cover the enclosure for two reasons. 1. the area around my property has lots of woods and fields for predators flying overhead to hunt in, and he wouldn't be visible from above due to the large trees over his enclosure and 2. his enclosure is right next to our outdoor dog pen (the cinder blocks were about half a foot away from the dogs' fence, which is made of square wire mesh nailed to wooden posts) where we have a medium-sized dog and 2 large dogs, all of which thoroughly scare off any nearby birds, rabbits, etc.
[POTENTIALLY TRIGGERING CONTENT BEGINS]
he honestly seemed extremely happy with his new home and never tried to escape that i saw. i checked on him often for the first couple of days to make sure he was okay. then, on wednesday, i discovered one of the corner cinderblocks had been moved, and the gap was large enough for him to escape. i couldn't find him anywhere in his enclosure. i know he's strong, but there's no way he could move those cinder blocks, and they hadn't budged for those first days, so i honestly had no clue this was a possibility. my parents helped me look all over for him, and to my horror, my dad found him in the dog pen. he had abrasions to his forelimbs with a couple of missing scales, and most of the scutes on his carapace and plastron were gone but fortunately with no punctures into his shell.
[POTENTIALLY TRIGGERING CONTENT ENDS]
i immediately soaked him in warm water and prepared to disinfect the wounds, but my mom (a nurse and far more rational than i was in the moment) helped me find an urgent care vet i could take him to. the experience wasn't great because it wasn't an exotic vet, but they at least cleaned his wounds, injected an antibiotic, applied some silver sulfadiazine cream, and sent me home with some anti-inflammatory oral meds.
the next day, i took him to the exotic vet i mentioned throughout this post, and he further cleaned the wounds, stitched his forelimbs, and gave me more of the anti-inflammatory medication plus a different kind of anti-inflammatory medicine, antibiotics, silver sulfadiazine cream, and a new supplement. he recommended that i change his substrate to some towels so i can keep them clean and remove any potentially sharp/pokey substrate and said the next couple of weeks would be critical for preventing inflection, and then it would take several months or even years for his shell to heal. he showed me some photographs of rehabilitated tortoises and said that his coloration would come back but likely not his scutes. he also recommended that i keep his enclosure between 90-95 degrees fahrenheit for his immune system and to not let the humidity drop below 40%. he said if he continued to not eat, he'd need a feeding tube.
he has a checkup with the vet in a couple of weeks. once the vet clears that infection and any potential pokes aren't a concern anymore, i plan to move him back into his outdoor enclosure with the non-light-emitting heat lamp in his hide, the cinder blocks reinforced, metal sheets lining the dogs' enclosure so they can't see or reach him, and some sort of covering over it (probably chicken wire).
now, i know this story is very sad, and i feel horrible. my heart is truly broken. i can't stop feeling like it was my fault, even though there's no way i could've known that the dogs could get to him with the information and prior experience i was working with. i've been crying for days over how much pain he must be in and how scared he must've been. i've honestly always felt more deeply for animals than i even do for people (i've spent my life caring for dogs, cats, horses, fish, etc. and am currently entering my senior year in college as a zoology major). i know he'll never be the same. neither will i. the dogs may not have known any better, but i don't think i can ever look at them the same. but the only thing i can do for him now is provide him with the best care that i possibly can, and i am terrified of making any mistakes that could further harm him.
so, please do not be critical or condescending of me; i'm already being horrible to myself, and i was an ignorant child when i first started out. i just want to be better and do right by him going forward, which is why your answers are so so important to me. thank you for understanding and for any advice you can offer about how i'm caring for him. i am doing and will continue to do the very best i can.
i hope you have a great rest of your day/week <3
i will give some brief info at the beginning, list my questions, and then provide further backstory/context at the end if you want to read that part. thank you so much in advance for your help <3
my tortoise is a ~5-to-6-year-old juvenile male russian about 5 inches in diameter living in middle tennessee. he spent most of his life indoors, and then the past year or so in an enclosure in the garage, and then last weekend he moved into an outdoor enclosure i built for him. however, he suffered an injury and is now back in his garage enclosure while he's healing after visiting an exotic vet. TRIGGER WARNING: the backstory/context below my questions contains information about his injury and how he got it, so if you don't want to read about that part, please skip it.
question 1: what uva/uvb is best for him? i know he needs uvb, and it wasn't an issue when he got plenty of sunlight, but now i want to make sure it's absolutely perfect to help his healing process go as well as it can while he's indoors. some places have info about uva/uvb, but i've seen on this forum that uva is just a marketing scheme??? but also, uva and uvb are two different wavelengths, so i'm confused how that's a marketing scheme? anyways, this is the bulb/lamp he currently has, with 50 watts and 120 volts: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0DZBK2KQG?tag=exoticpetnetw-20 but it doesn't say anywhere on the listing or the packaging what % uva/uvb it is. he also has this 50 watt halogen basking bulb: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B000KHBT12?tag=exoticpetnetw-20 in a ceramic lamp, so together they make the warm side 90-100 degrees farenheit, and the vet said 90-95 was best for his immune system right now (lowering one to increase the temperature would reduce the % of his enclosure covered by light, and the vet said around 70% of the enclosure should be covered by the lamp, so i am just using both of them together for right now). then, at night, he has this non-light-emitting heating lamp: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0DR2HPR9P?tag=exoticpetnetw-20 . am i doing okay with heating/lighting? humidity isn't an issue except for a few weeks of the year because it's tennessee and he's not in air conditioning. the vet said not to let it fall below 40%, which it almost never does anyways, but i have one of my mom's old essential oil diffusers that i just put water in for when it gets too try, and i just put it next to/in/right above his enclosure. right now it's consistently between 60-80% humidity. but also, he's a desert tortoise, so that's a bit confusing to me as well. sorry this question ended up being much more of a wall of text than i meant for it to be!!!
question 2: are there any tricks to getting him to eat/how much is normal for him to eat? he's not really been eating the past few days which is concerning on its own but also problematic because his medicine is recommended to be taken with food. i've offered him pellets ( https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0002DHPBC?tag=exoticpetnetw-20 and https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00OV0WH74?tag=exoticpetnetw-20 ), foraged weeds (plantain, clover, dandelion, and fescue, with flowers, leaves, and stems, all cut up into small pieces and rinsed in water), and veggies cut up into tiny bits and rinsed in water (celery stems and leaves, cucumber, and baby carrots), all with supplements sprinkled over top ( https://www.amazon.com/dp/B094DB6F63?tag=exoticpetnetw-20 and this one my vet sold me: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0D82DPB1D?tag=exoticpetnetw-20 ), but i've yet to see him eat any of it or notice any of it gone. he's walked over it, looked at it, maybe even opened and closed his mouth, but not eaten. i've read that offering him sugary fruits could work but that it's really bad for him so i'm scared to do that. i have seen him take long drinks of water, though. over the years, i've seen him eat, but a very little bit at a time, which made sense to me since he's so small, but i want to make sure that's normal. i've fed him lettuce, cabbage, kale, and spinach before (in moderation since i know those aren't great for them), and he ate those, but, again, i don't want to give him anything that could be bad for him right now. i've offered him cut-up strawberry and watermelon in the past too but he wasn't interested. i just really want him to eat and would rather him not have to go through the potential trauma of a feeding tube
question 3: is there any way or possibility at all to promote scute regeneration? i've read that they can grow back but also that they can't. the vet said in his experience they never do, but that my baby at least has his youth going for him. so is there anything you guys know of that i could do to increase the chance that they might grow back? and if they don't, is there something i can do for him or give to him to stand in for the scutes? kind of like a disability aid? because i know scutes are an important protective keratin layer for tortoises, so it seems like it would be problematic for him to be missing any, but they may not grow back on their own??
okay, i'm sorry if this is too long to read, i just want to give you guys all the context you may need to answer these because your help means the world to me
so here's some more background:i got my tortoise from a petsmart or petco (i don't remember which) in florida when i was 15 in 2020. i know that's a horrible place to get tortoises and they don't know much about them, and i definitely regret how i cared for him in those first few months, but i can't change it. all i can control is the future, and every time i learn something i could be doing better, i change. anyways, they didn't know how old he was or what sex he was. they guessed about 6-8 months and said i'd have to wait till he was older to sex him. i did some research, and based on the v-shape of his anal scutes and pointiness of his tail, i'm pretty sure he's male (and the vet agreed).
he's had an indoor enclosure for the past 1-2 years made of solid wood walls/flooring so he can't see through it or climb out. it's 4 feet by 2 feet, which is i know is less than the minimum 8 feet by 4 feet, but it was the best i could do for him at the time. there was a reptile carpet in the bottom covered by reptile substrate and pellets. he had a rock for basking on, shallow food and water dishes, and some enrichments/decorations like a little bridge thingy and half of a fake log thing (sorry idk the technical terms for these lol).
but i learned more and knew he needed better, and that, ultimately, outdoors is ideal, so i built him an outdoor enclosure. it's about 23 feet by 12 feet with a 1-foot dig guard around the perimeter made of metal roofing sheets. the above-ground perimeter is made of cinder blocks on three sides and the side of my house on the fourth, which is made of brick. i also created a deep-shade hide for him against the side of my house using more of those metal sheets across the top, weighed down with bricks, and i closed in either side with bricks and the opening with more metal sheets, leaving a wide space for him to get inside without bumping the metal or the cinder blocks. there are 3 large bushes inside it and a couple trees outside of the enclosure that provide shade over it, but still a couple gaps for direct sunlight where i put several large rocks. there was already fescue growing there, and i planted some clover and dandelion from elsewhere in the yard. i put 3 different water dishes and his pellets + supplements in his food dish, but again he had some plants in there he could forage on. the substrate is just the ground. i didn't cover the enclosure for two reasons. 1. the area around my property has lots of woods and fields for predators flying overhead to hunt in, and he wouldn't be visible from above due to the large trees over his enclosure and 2. his enclosure is right next to our outdoor dog pen (the cinder blocks were about half a foot away from the dogs' fence, which is made of square wire mesh nailed to wooden posts) where we have a medium-sized dog and 2 large dogs, all of which thoroughly scare off any nearby birds, rabbits, etc.
[POTENTIALLY TRIGGERING CONTENT BEGINS]
he honestly seemed extremely happy with his new home and never tried to escape that i saw. i checked on him often for the first couple of days to make sure he was okay. then, on wednesday, i discovered one of the corner cinderblocks had been moved, and the gap was large enough for him to escape. i couldn't find him anywhere in his enclosure. i know he's strong, but there's no way he could move those cinder blocks, and they hadn't budged for those first days, so i honestly had no clue this was a possibility. my parents helped me look all over for him, and to my horror, my dad found him in the dog pen. he had abrasions to his forelimbs with a couple of missing scales, and most of the scutes on his carapace and plastron were gone but fortunately with no punctures into his shell.
[POTENTIALLY TRIGGERING CONTENT ENDS]
i immediately soaked him in warm water and prepared to disinfect the wounds, but my mom (a nurse and far more rational than i was in the moment) helped me find an urgent care vet i could take him to. the experience wasn't great because it wasn't an exotic vet, but they at least cleaned his wounds, injected an antibiotic, applied some silver sulfadiazine cream, and sent me home with some anti-inflammatory oral meds.
the next day, i took him to the exotic vet i mentioned throughout this post, and he further cleaned the wounds, stitched his forelimbs, and gave me more of the anti-inflammatory medication plus a different kind of anti-inflammatory medicine, antibiotics, silver sulfadiazine cream, and a new supplement. he recommended that i change his substrate to some towels so i can keep them clean and remove any potentially sharp/pokey substrate and said the next couple of weeks would be critical for preventing inflection, and then it would take several months or even years for his shell to heal. he showed me some photographs of rehabilitated tortoises and said that his coloration would come back but likely not his scutes. he also recommended that i keep his enclosure between 90-95 degrees fahrenheit for his immune system and to not let the humidity drop below 40%. he said if he continued to not eat, he'd need a feeding tube.
he has a checkup with the vet in a couple of weeks. once the vet clears that infection and any potential pokes aren't a concern anymore, i plan to move him back into his outdoor enclosure with the non-light-emitting heat lamp in his hide, the cinder blocks reinforced, metal sheets lining the dogs' enclosure so they can't see or reach him, and some sort of covering over it (probably chicken wire).
now, i know this story is very sad, and i feel horrible. my heart is truly broken. i can't stop feeling like it was my fault, even though there's no way i could've known that the dogs could get to him with the information and prior experience i was working with. i've been crying for days over how much pain he must be in and how scared he must've been. i've honestly always felt more deeply for animals than i even do for people (i've spent my life caring for dogs, cats, horses, fish, etc. and am currently entering my senior year in college as a zoology major). i know he'll never be the same. neither will i. the dogs may not have known any better, but i don't think i can ever look at them the same. but the only thing i can do for him now is provide him with the best care that i possibly can, and i am terrified of making any mistakes that could further harm him.
so, please do not be critical or condescending of me; i'm already being horrible to myself, and i was an ignorant child when i first started out. i just want to be better and do right by him going forward, which is why your answers are so so important to me. thank you for understanding and for any advice you can offer about how i'm caring for him. i am doing and will continue to do the very best i can.
i hope you have a great rest of your day/week <3
