Questions and Concerns about my baby Red Foot

[kugti]

My Red Foot is making noises that sound almost like little quacks or croaks and I have not heard him make them until today. He made the sound like three times in succession after i soaked him and put him in front of his food and then 10ish minutes later he made the noise 3 times in a row again while walking around. What is he trying to tell me?

My other concern is that he isnt eating very much.. he does eat some but i dont feel like its enough. I put out green leaf lettuce, corn, squash and kiwi yesterday all cut up very fine since he is such a small guy and he ate maybe 2-3 small pieces of squash and that was it. I then later got him to eat like 1.5 blades of wheat grass and that is all i know about him eating yesterday. his food dish seemed untouched the rest of the day.

Today i mashed up some banana for him and still had corn, lettuce and squash available.

Some background...I bought him a week ago Sunday and he spent the first week in my GF's case with her new red foot which is a tab older than mine. I brought him home to his new environment Saturday evening so he has been in here for about 65 hours. I realize red foots can easily get stressed especially in new environments but i am wanting to fix that situation asap and get everything squared away. I am not sure how old he is but i think is is very young as the shel on his underside is still soft. I have included a picture of the current set-up and configuration of his lights. Temps around the habitat range from 78-90 degrees and humidity is good i spray it down 2-3 times a day and the towel i also wet and it helps trap some moisture.

Let me know if anyone has any ideas or suggestions for me.

Thanks in advance guys!

 

[LindaF]

Check out turtletary.com for a care sheet. Is your little guy having problems breathing? His his nose and eyes clear? My red foot only seems to make noises when he eats.

 

[oscar]

Not sure about the sounds he makes. Is he alert? don't think you should be offering him corn. I would try endive and maybe a little piece of raspberry, strawberry or even watermelon, my red foots can't resist it.

 

[kugti]

Check out turtletary.com for a care sheet. Is your little guy having problems breathing? His his nose and eyes clear? My red foot only seems to make noises when he eats.

Im 99% sure he is breathing fine. Both nose and eyes are clear, i have seen the difference because the day we brought my gf's red foot home he had bubbles in his eyes but after we got him in a good environment he has been great since. I think he makes those noises around his food dish or the wheat grass which he nibbles on so maybe it is around when he is thinking about eating.

Not sure about the sounds he makes. Is he alert? don't think you should be offering him corn. I would try endive and maybe a little piece of raspberry, strawberry or even watermelon, my red foots can't resist it.

He is alert and moves around. He usually hangs out around on top of the flower bed quite a bit and the temp there is between 87-92 degrees.

After i created this topic he did eat some more banana but thats about it that i can tell.

---

I also just noticed that his temp in his habitat after his heat light goes off drops to below 70. Its currently sitting at 67.2 so i think thats something that needs to be addressed correct?

 

[terryo]

Just my opinion, but I would not have so much light on him. Maybe it would be better to have a CHE and a long tube on the other side with 5.0 UVB. When I first got mine, I had a bright light and Terry K. told me.....low light, warm humidity. I don't know if that's the problem or not, it's just a suggestion.

 

[kugti]

Just my opinion, but I would not have so much light on him. Maybe it would be better to have a CEH and a long tube on the other side with 5.0 UVB. When I first got mine, I had a bright light and Terry K. told me.....low light, warm humidity. I don't know if that's the problem or not, it's just a suggestion.

CEH? I am headed back to the pet store tomorrow to exchange my bulb set-up and was thinking about buying at least a heat emitter bulb instead. Unless others have suggested with going with a mercury vapor bulb which is just one bulb all together. I am worried this might affect my plant growth as well. I am planning on making my enclosure larger in 6 weeks anyway so the light would be easier to disperse among the environment if i stuck with multiple bulbs. a long tube uvb on the other side would increase my budget which is fine if it is necessary

Thanks for the help guys and girls!

 

[LindaF]

I have spent a small fortune on bulbs until I got the right mix. I have a ceramic heat emitter bulb. It gives off heat and no light. If I need additional heat I also have a red infrared bulb. For uvb I have a 5.0 strip bulb off to the side. My little guy really likes low light. When I went to Terry K for advice because my RF was always hiding and wouldn't come out to eat, he advised me to lose the bright light and when I did my tort became very active.

 

[Laura]

They are forest dwellers and dont like a lot of light...
they need hides.. to feel secure..

 

[Madkins007]

Red-foots are not a forest animal- they are a savannah animal, but all baby tortoises are shy and do not like bright sun.

It is easy to 'blast' reptiles with too much light and dry heat, and keep them too dry. That affects their appetite and stress levels. Just for comparison, your habitat looks a bit dry- I can see the watermarks on the wooden walls, which means a lot of the moisture that should be benefiting the little guy is being sucked into the wood. You can try lining the habitat with some plastic liner, and also at least partially covering the the habitat to keep the heat and humidity closer to the animals.

There are some different tricks you can try based on where you live. What has worked best for me has been waterproof heating rope under the substrate, then wetting the substrate so the heaters create warm humidity that rises past the tortoises.

As far as diet- yours is not terrible. Getting them to eat wheatgrass is interesting- most of us cannot get ours to eat it, and Red-foots are not big grass eaters anyway. One thing is that your pile of food looks kind of big but that would depend on how large the tortoise really is.

As long as he is eating ANYTHING, I would focus on getting the habitat right.

I have some notes at http://www.tortoiselibrary.com that may help.

 

[kugti]

I have spent a small fortune on bulbs until I got the right mix. I have a ceramic heat emitter bulb. It gives off heat and no light. If I need additional heat I also have a red infrared bulb. For uvb I have a 5.0 strip bulb off to the side. My little guy really likes low light. When I went to Terry K for advice because my RF was always hiding and wouldn't come out to eat, he advised me to lose the bright light and when I did my tort became very active.

I exchanged my light set-up today for a single mercury vapor bulb and I have also ordered a 150watt heat emitter bulb to aid in heat both during the day and primarily to keep temps up at night.

Red-foots are not a forest animal- they are a savannah animal, but all baby tortoises are shy and do not like bright sun.

It is easy to 'blast' reptiles with too much light and dry heat, and keep them too dry. That affects their appetite and stress levels. Just for comparison, your habitat looks a bit dry- I can see the watermarks on the wooden walls, which means a lot of the moisture that should be benefiting the little guy is being sucked into the wood. You can try lining the habitat with some plastic liner, and also at least partially covering the the habitat to keep the heat and humidity closer to the animals.

There are some different tricks you can try based on where you live. What has worked best for me has been waterproof heating rope under the substrate, then wetting the substrate so the heaters create warm humidity that rises past the tortoises.

As far as diet- yours is not terrible. Getting them to eat wheatgrass is interesting- most of us cannot get ours to eat it, and Red-foots are not big grass eaters anyway. One thing is that your pile of food looks kind of big but that would depend on how large the tortoise really is.

As long as he is eating ANYTHING, I would focus on getting the habitat right.

I have some notes at http://www.tortoiselibrary.com that may help.

The watermarks on the side are from my mister as i spray it down. I like the idea of waterproof heat rope. I have partially covered the habitat with a towel i have also sprayed down with warm water. I do put out too much food the tortoise is a very small young guy at the moment. Ill report back with what i find with the new light set-up. I hope the merc vapor bulb works for him by going down to 1 light instead of two.

Also where can i find heating rope?

 

[kugti]

He is eating better today. My seeds in my mini garden sprouted and he is eating those left and right. He is going to eat them all before they actually grow into a plant lol. The merc vap bulb isnt getting everything quite as warm as i would like but when my ceramic heat emitter arrives it should more than help. Now my little red foot just needs to eat a variety of foods and ill be content.

 

[Yvonne G]

CEH? I am headed back to the pet store tomorrow to exchange my bulb set-up and was thinking about buying at least a heat emitter bulb instead.

I'm pretty sure Terry meant to type "CHE." I've corrected her post. CHE stands for ceramic heat emitter. It screws into a regular light fixture and provides heat without light.

 

[Madkins007]

Here is the waterproof heating rope I use- http://www.bigappleherp.com/Big-Apple-Flexible-Heat-Ropes

 

[kugti]

I now have a MVB and CHE along with 32 seeds starting to grow + 5 plants so humidity is up and he is eating and exploring quite a bit more. Everything is going good now!

 

[Laura]

I always thought they were rain forest type.. but I guess they live in ALL types..

The red-foot tortoise is found throughout extreme southern Central America, and central and northern South America including the countries of Panama, Colombia, Venezuela, Guyana, Surinam, French Guyana, Brazil, Bolivia, Paraguay, and Argentina.[4] They are also found on Trinidad, Barbados, Saint Lucia etc.[7] and have been introduced to many other islands in the West Indies.[8]

The red-foot occupies a number of habitats within this extensive range.[5] It occurs in all types of forest habitat (rainforest, temperate forest, and dry thorn forest), and also dwells in savanna areas, including man-made grasslands resulting from ranching and slash-and-burn agricultural practices.[8] Forest edges and savannas seem to be the preferred habitat for this species,[2][8][9] although there is some disagreement over this. Walker (1989) states that red-foots prefer grasslands and dry forest areas, and that rain-forest habitat is most likely marginal.[4] Other authors however, state or suggest that humid forest is the preferred habitat (Legler, 1963) (Moskovits, 1988),[4] although much of their range south of the Amazon is outside the rain forest region.[2][9]

 

[Madkins007]

Laura- I wrote a decent chunk of that in the Wikipedia. An earlier author had slanted the entry heavily towards it being a rainforest animal, so I edited it to better reflect the reality. About 80% of the habitat lays outside the tropical rain forest zone.

There are a ton of references in reliable sources that the Red-foot is a savannah species as much as it is a forest species- but not all southern forests are rainforests, and not all forests are dark and deep. One example is http://www.springerlink.com/content/h6624g33w0145017/... "While C. carbonaria is generally restricted to savannah habitats and adjacent forests, C. denticulata is associated with wet tropical and subtropical forests."

Red-foots are a very adaptable animal that does well in many biomes, in a range of conditions. As far as we can tell, they don't even particularly seem to like the rain forest- most often being found in openings and edges when there is a rain forest nearby.

Now, the Yellow-foot is a true rain forest species, as are several African and Indochinese species!

 

[terryo]

I really know nothing about where RF's come from. The breeder that I got Pio from told me her parents came from Brazil, and she was a pure Brazilian Cherry Head.....whatever that means, and I don't know if it was true or not. I researched many care sheets before I got her, and incorporated a little from each one, with a touch of my own methods brought into the mix. But, I mostly followed Terry K's (NERD) care sheet, and Pio turned out pretty good, and now I'm doing the same for Solo. He always told me "keep it simple". It seemed to work for me, so far. (Is this OT?...sorry)

 

[Madkins007]

LOL- Cherry-heads (Brazilian Red-foots) come from a part of Brazil even further away from the rain forest than many of the other Red-foots! Only the northern half or so of Brazil is true rain forest, the southern half is highlands, scrub forests, near deserts, grasslands, rocky hills, more temperate forests, and more. Brazil is a huge country- just barely smaller than the US. Like the US, it has a lot of different climates.

Thinking that Brazil is all rain forest is a common thing we do when we really don't know the place. Like how I think that New York is a solid city paved over from edge to edge, and many people think Nebraska is a flat prairie covered with corn and prairie grass stuck in the 1800's (and I forgive anyone who thinks this whose main memory of the state is a long drive on the Interstate- one of the most boring in the US!)

There is a range map and a climate/vegetation map in the Library- http://www.tortoiselibrary.com/range.html and http://www.tortoiselibrary.com/climate.html. You can also see some farmed Brazilians in about their natural habitat at either www.geochelone.com.br/usa/index.cfm or http://www.carbonaria.com/prod.htm

One of the reasons I love the Brazilian tortoises is that they are hardier and more forgiving of their cares than their Northern cousins. They tolerate wider temp and humidity extremes, and in the wild, even handle temps down to freezing for short periods. I also like that they are pretty!

I'd address the 'simple' bit in more depth, but that would definitely be heading further off topic.