Please advise on care of Greek

[Ajax]

Hi! My name is AJ and I joined the forum last week. Everyone has been very informative, helpful, and kind. So thank you all for that! My Greek, Bumbaloo, is I think around 8-10 weeks old. I took her to an exotic animal vet on Jan. 25th because she was very lethargic and was not eating. The vet said that she had an eye infection in her left eye and prescribed eye drops (3x a day for 10 days). Other than that, he said she looked to be in good health and advised that I up the heat in her enclosure which I did. Bumbaloo weighed in at 20g. She wasn’t really opening her left eye before and was rubbing it. Now she is opening the eye so it does seem to be clearing up. I am concerned that she just doesn’t seem to have any energy until after I soak her. She wakes up after her bath, eats some of her food then goes right back to sleep. Every once in a while she will skip eating after her soak and just wants to sleep. I see her in different spots in her enclosure so I know she has moved around during the day and night. I have also spotted her in her food and water dishes. So she may be eating some when I’m not around. I want to make sure I’m giving her the best care possible and am really worried she’s not thriving. I soak her for 20 minutes in luke warm water every afternoon and make sure she has water in her saucer. I have also done the baby food soak once. Her enclosure is a 2ft x 3ft x 1ft wooden box with a substrate of cypress mulch and coconut coir. I do plan to replace this with a bigger enclosure sometime soon. I mist the pen down every morning with warm water and wet down the moss in her hide that is near the basking area. I feed her a rotation of spring leaf mix, kale, and dandelion and also throw in some carrots, iceberg lettuce, and cabbage on occasion. I have tried feeding her some softened grassland tortoise pellets but she doesn’t eat them. I put fresh food in her dish in the morning and after her soak. I have changed up the lighting so I am now using a 100w power sun MVB during the day and a CHE at night. The temps and humidity in the enclosure were fluctuating so I added a covered top as suggested by one of your forum members. The temps in the enclosure are 95-100F under the basking lamp and 80-85F on the cool side during the day. It is 80-85F in the warm area and 70-75F in the cooler areas at night. The humidity is usually around 60-65% and after I mist the pen in the morning it raises to around 75-80% then drops back down as the substrate dries out. I’m still working to adjust the height of the lamps and heat for the best temp. I’m using a digital temp gauge mounted on the side of the pen for more accurate temp readings. Some pictures of Bumbaloo and her setup are included. Please advise me in what else I can do to help my tort and let me know if there is anything that should be changed in the enclosure or that I should be doing differently. Any and all suggestions are welcomed and appreciated.

Thank you for reading my post and helping!
AJ

 

[chemprentice]

Where did you get the tortoise from? When did you get the tortoise?

As a baby tortoise, he is probably going to be sleeping a lot, just like human babies do. When I first received my Greek tort, he was around 10 weeks old. He would sleep for 20 hours a day, almost always burrowed under the coir. He didn't really get comfortable in his new habitat until a month later, so it does take time for your tort to get used to you and start to do things on their own. Now, after having him for 4 months, he wakes up on his own and heads to the heat lamp 'cause he knows it's time to get warm. He'll bask for two hours, then start pacing for food and wait for me to give him food, eat, pause, bask, then go back to his favorite warm spot.

I think it will definitely take time before he gets comfortable and used to you.