Sick Sulcata - Needing Help Fast

[Theodore315]

Hello,

We are new here, but are needing some help with our baby sulcata tortoise who isn't doing well. My boyfriend and I purchased a tortoise, who is named Rocky, in May of this year, and was told that he was 8 weeks old (making him 4 months old now), and he seemed to be doing fine up until this past week or so and we have no clue what to do.

He in the past week has stopped eating, has grown lethargic, and can't open his eyes.

He has been worse today than ever before and we are getting really worried about him. We have called all of the emergency vets in my state and nobody can fit him in and/or they do not see tortoises. They gave us a few pointers, such as monitoring his temp and keeping him very warm, we have him on the warm side of his tank and it's currently about 87º where he is sitting, keeping the soil wet with warm water, and trying to give him some baby food on his beak to get him to intake some calories.

He in the past 24 hours has really declined and we are running out of people to call for advice, so we decided to turn here. Any and all help would be very much appreciated.

 

[ZEROPILOT]

That sounds extremely serious and you haven't given us much to go by.
Immediately place him in a shallow warm water bath and give him a soak.
Ad some sweet potato or pumpkin baby food to the water. Something not too sweet. At this point use whatever you have.
Get his temperature at least into the lower 90s.
How is he being housed? Photograph the heating and lighting types and tell us the humidity levels.
What are you feeding? What is the substrate?
Unfortunately this sounds pretty bad. Babies are very hard to bring back to health when they didn't get started correctly. And tortoises only show serious illness when things are already critical

 

[Maro2Bear]

What are your daytime & night time temps? Where do you keep him? Inside or outside?

Upload some pix of the enclosure.

Sounds to me like a temperature issue….ambient needs to be 80F 24/7, it’s been hot, is it inside or outside. What are your night time temps?

 

[wellington]

Get the enclosure temp all over up to 85-90. Day and night
Get the basking temp to 95-100.
Get the humidity to 80%
An do as ZEROPILOT suggested.
After all that then give us the housing, diet, bulbs, heat source, etc, everything you have been doing up until now.

 

[TammyJ]

Sorry about your tortoise. Can you post some pictures of him for us please?

 

[Theodore315]

He is in a 40 gallon tank inside the house, he has a heat bulb and mat, and a UVB bulb. We did soak him with some baby food a few times, and we can warm it up... the vet had told us no warmer than 90º because it would shock him, but we will work on warming it even more.

He usually eats romaine lettuce, kale, other greens every day, sometimes fruits and veggies, only a few times a week, with calcium powder about once a week, and he has always eaten okay before this.

Ill take some photos in a minute and get them up.

What else can we do for him?

 

[Theodore315]

We did take out his hides so we can see him better to keep an eye on him, but this is his enclosure. he has the heat bulb right over him and then the other bulb is the UVB.

 

[Maro2Bear]

He is in a 40 gallon tank inside the house, he has a heat bulb and mat, and a UVB bulb. We did soak him with some baby food a few times, and we can warm it up... the vet had told us no warmer than 90º because it would shock him, but we will work on warming it even more.

He usually eats romaine lettuce, kale, other greens every day, sometimes fruits and veggies, only a few times a week, with calcium powder about once a week, and he has always eaten okay before this.

Ill take some photos in a minute and get them up.

What else can we do for him?

How about night time temperatures?

 

[Theodore315]

Nighttime temperatures are usually in the upper 70ºs low 80ºs, and the humidity is fairly constant around 70..

 

[Maro2Bear]

In between everything else, take some time & read Tom’s most excellent care guide. It addresses everything you need. Substrate, soaking, lighting, temperatures, food & enclosures.

The Best Way To Raise A Sulcata, Leopard, Or Star Tortoise

I chose the title of this care sheet very carefully. Are there other ways to raise babies? Yes. Yes there are, but those ways are not as good. What follows is the BEST way, according to 30 years of research and experimentation with hundreds of babies of many species. Babies hatch during the...

www.tortoiseforum.org

 

[Maro2Bear]

Nighttime temperatures are usually in the upper 70ºs low 80ºs, and the humidity is fairly constant around 70..

So. Minimum ambient 24/7 NEEDS to be at least 80. I’m guessing your night time temps are just too cold. You need a fully enclosed enclosure to maintain both daytime & nighttime temps & humidity.
Tort needs to be soaked daily for 20-30 mins in warm water.

The Best Way To Raise A Sulcata, Leopard, Or Star Tortoise

I chose the title of this care sheet very carefully. Are there other ways to raise babies? Yes. Yes there are, but those ways are not as good. What follows is the BEST way, according to 30 years of research and experimentation with hundreds of babies of many species. Babies hatch during the...

www.tortoiseforum.org

 

[Theodore315]

So. Minimum ambient 24/7 NEEDS to be at least 80. I’m guessing your night time temps are just too cold. You need a fully enclosed enclosure to maintain both daytime & nighttime temps & humidity.
Tort needs to be soaked daily for 20-30 mins in warm water.

The Best Way To Raise A Sulcata, Leopard, Or Star Tortoise

I chose the title of this care sheet very carefully. Are there other ways to raise babies? Yes. Yes there are, but those ways are not as good. What follows is the BEST way, according to 30 years of research and experimentation with hundreds of babies of many species. Babies hatch during the...

www.tortoiseforum.org

Okay... we will start warming it up now, its close to 90º now and we'll keep raising the warm side even more.

We do soak him about 15 minutes in warm water everyday, as we were instructed by his breeder, and that used to be the time that he seemed to get hungry, and would eat right after and then defecate.

Aside from temperature is there anything else we can do in the moment for him?

 

[TammyJ]

Can we see some close up pictures of the tortoise?

 

[Theodore315]

Here's a couple close up photos, he tucks his head in whenever we pick him up s it's hard to get one of his face.

 

[TammyJ]

How long have his eyes been closed?

 

[ZEROPILOT]

He is in a 40 gallon tank inside the house, he has a heat bulb and mat, and a UVB bulb. We did soak him with some baby food a few times, and we can warm it up... the vet had told us no warmer than 90º because it would shock him, but we will work on warming it even more.

He usually eats romaine lettuce, kale, other greens every day, sometimes fruits and veggies, only a few times a week, with calcium powder about once a week, and he has always eaten okay before this.

Ill take some photos in a minute and get them up.

What else can we do for him?

He should not be eating fruit. But this is probably not related to that.
I think your temperatures have been entirely too low.
How do you provide heat at night while it's dark? And what is the uvb "bulb"? Is it a coiled bulb or an mvb. Remove it and throw it away asap if so

 

[Theodore315]

How long have his eyes been closed?

About 3 days

 

[Maro2Bear]

Okay... we will start warming it up now, its close to 90º now and we'll keep raising the warm side even more.

We do soak him about 15 minutes in warm water everyday, as we were instructed by his breeder, and that used to be the time that he seemed to get hungry, and would eat right after and then defecate.

Aside from temperature is there anything else we can do in the moment for him?

Don’t overdo the temp. You don’t want any “cold” sides - striving for a solid 80F ambient all day & night with a warmer 90-95 basking area.
Your temp gauge is also not the best & not in the best location. If u have an IR temp gun….use that to measure. Your pet store analog one isn’t very accurate.

 

[Theodore315]

He should not be eating fruit. But this is probably not related to that.
I think your temperatures have been entirely too low.
How do you provide heat at night while it's dark? And what is the uvb "bulb"?

We. leave the heat mat and bulb on at night, and turn off the other light. The heat bulb is one that had been recommenced to us at a reptile expo... I'm not sure what it is as I don't have the box anymore. It's in a 5.5" light hood, and it looks like a regular light bulb, and gives off heat and white light.

 

[Theodore315]

Don’t overdo the temp. You don’t want any “cold” sides - striving for a solid 80F ambient all day & night with a warmer 90-95 basking area.
Your temp gauge is also not the best & not in the best location. If u have an IR temp gun….use that to measure. Your pet store analog one isn’t very accurate.

Okay, we will keep the temp around 90-95º. We do not have a heat gun, but will look into one. Where should we have this one placed?