I have to wonder if she has been denied this in the past and instinctively is making up for this UV "starvation" now that she has it available? (I wrote this before I saw you were on the same thought track) Great minds and all that.I gave her another soak today and another scrubbing with the toothbrush, especially on the fungus and ugly/weird green stuff on her shell by the hinge.
It's doesn't smell, isn't soft, isn't gooey... it's just weird and gross... my thinking is that it may be copper or other mineral evaporites from the water in the house where she used to live (Long Island, NY, which has famously odd water in many towns).
Her carapace is warped and very uneven, I was thinking from poor nutrition or no UV, or both... at any rate, she's able to squeeze out eggs, which is one worry I no longer have to entertain.
I was surprised to see her seek out and park herself in the brightest spot in the enclosure directly under the UV light several times today when it was on... for my forest torts, I do a needlessly tricky lighting schedule with dark periods during the day, and I noticed her going over a minute or so after the light would come on, each time.
My understanding has been that homeana are creatures of shade and twilight and are assiduously crepuscular, so my (possibly overly anthropomorphic) thought was that she recognized the light, the UV, as something she'd been lacking, and was going over to make up for lost time.
At any rate, she seems quicker to "come out of her shell" than the last transplant homeana that came to live with me, and I'm obsessing over her needs and welfare, which is my regular stage-1 with a new tort.
Jamie