sick redfoot?

[samanthak]

Hi. I am new here and I recently got a redfoot. He is about 5-6 inches in length and I have only had him about a month. When I first got him he was very active and ate like pig. Now all he does is sleep on the cool side of his enclosure. I give he a soak twice a week and for those he is awake and moving around but when I put him back he goes and hides and sleeps more. He also isn't eating near as much as he did. He had a fecal done before he started acting weird and he has no parasites. What could this be?

He is on cypress mulch and he is kept at 90 degrees on his hot side and around 75-80 on his cool side. He is given clean water everyday, and offered food daily. He has a reptisun 100w bulb.

 

[terryo]

Hi Samantha, welcome to the forum. I keep my Cherry Head at about 87 degrees. I don't have a hot side or a cool side. The whole vivarium is kept the same. I ues a heat emitter and a long tube 10.0 UVB. I also keep the humidity in the high 70's..to 80 degrees. Low light, high warm humidity is what I was told for mine. What are you keeping him in, and what is the humidity?

 

[Yvonne G]

Hi Samantha:

Welcome to the forum!!

When talking about redfoot tortoises, you can toss the warm side/cool side thing right out the window. Its perfectly ok to have a solid 80 degrees all over the whole habitat.

May we know where you are located?

The first thing I think of when someone has a problem like yours is that the tortoise isn't warm enough. Start soaking him in warm water every morning and raise the temperature in the habitat to at least 80 all over the habitat. Warmer would even be ok. Also, put some plants either fake or real so that the habitat is sort of closed up.

 

[samanthak]

I live in alabama. His humidity is kept around 65 percent he is in a large rubbermaid. What real plants would you recommend?

 

[Yvonne G]

Pathos, those little neantha bella palm, strawberry, sedum ground covers, baby tears, wandering jew, pansy, johnny jump up, Nastursium, geranium, dandelion, clover, dichondra, chamomile...and the list goes on!

 

[Madkins007]

Have you checked your real temps at the soil level across the habitat? A cheap probe thermometer or cheap IR digital thermometer will tell you what the temps are where the tortoise is. They get sluggish in temps that are too high or too cool.

Thermal gradients are helpful for most keepers. It can be tough to keep a consistent temp across the habitat, and you will never find two people who will agree on what THE right temp is. Heck, Yvonne says 80 and Terry O says 87.

There is also the detail that the idea of using a single temp is based on a flawed understanding of the tortoise's natural habitat. Red-foot habitat is mostly savannah grasslands that vary in temp as much as any other habitat, but even those from the actual rain forest can find microclimates ranging from 70 to 90 in the underbrush even though climatic logs claim that the air temps vary only by a little.

I think one of the real tricks to raising tortoises is to offer them as many microclimates as you reasonably can so they can choose the habitat they want for their current situation. After all, tortoises in general prefer warmer temps to digest than they do to sleep for just one example.

 

[samanthak]

I completely changed his substrate and soaked him for a while today and he is acting back to normal. He hasn't gone back into hiding and he has been walking around all day. He also ate like a pig. I don't know what it was but I must have done something right.