- Joined
- Mar 3, 2014
- Messages
- 118
Looking for advice our Russian's inactivity over the past 7-10 days -- not coming out much, eyes mostly closed when he does, not really eating. His appetite and activity were up and down for a few weeks before this, but it seemed to roughly correlate with the weather, and wasn't chronic. We are having a weird New England winter where it was unseasonably warm the whole time the days were getting shorter (near 70 on xmas!) and then suddenly got more seasonably cold and dry around New Years, so maybe that's a shock to his system. (Tank temps are stable, but I always assume they have other ways of knowing the real weather.)
We have had him for almost 2 years, and shortly after he first came home, we saw very similar behavior, and after tons of tortoise forum advice, much tweaking of his environment, some vet visits, and a LOT of tortoise TLC/emergency medicine, he passed something very dry and strange looking and then recovered. I think this was a hangover from his too small, too dry pet store environment with dehydrated food and god knows what else, and probably doesn't bear on what's happening now, but I'm having a hard time knowing how much to worry about the current situation.
Nothing but the weather has really changed. He is in a glass terrarium (probably a little too small, but I know how to heat this one for the winter, so will try to upgrade this spring/summer) with a good range of temps -- 70 to 105/110. Combo UVB/heat bulb. Covered with plexiglass on the non-bulb side, to hold in some heat and humidity.
I think humidity is probably too low right now -- the room ranges 35-60% (with the higher at night when we run a humidifier). I'm going to put some effort into that, but I don't think that would lead to such inactivity? He also has a wide pale band on his shell (2-3 cm), which I think can indicate chronically low humidity?? Would love confirmation of that.
Thanks for any input.
We have had him for almost 2 years, and shortly after he first came home, we saw very similar behavior, and after tons of tortoise forum advice, much tweaking of his environment, some vet visits, and a LOT of tortoise TLC/emergency medicine, he passed something very dry and strange looking and then recovered. I think this was a hangover from his too small, too dry pet store environment with dehydrated food and god knows what else, and probably doesn't bear on what's happening now, but I'm having a hard time knowing how much to worry about the current situation.
Nothing but the weather has really changed. He is in a glass terrarium (probably a little too small, but I know how to heat this one for the winter, so will try to upgrade this spring/summer) with a good range of temps -- 70 to 105/110. Combo UVB/heat bulb. Covered with plexiglass on the non-bulb side, to hold in some heat and humidity.
I think humidity is probably too low right now -- the room ranges 35-60% (with the higher at night when we run a humidifier). I'm going to put some effort into that, but I don't think that would lead to such inactivity? He also has a wide pale band on his shell (2-3 cm), which I think can indicate chronically low humidity?? Would love confirmation of that.
Thanks for any input.
