Hi all ^ - ^
My brother owns 2 res for several months now. More of those several months they've been living in a less than suitable environment (such as a bare tub with water and rocks) and now we have a basking dock and both UVB and UVA. We've been using only UVB for a while, until 2 days ago, and we're planning to put back the UVB (because I've realized that UVA won't help the vitamin A deficiency the poor guys are going through), but anyways, like I said, the UVA only has been up for two days. The more outgoing one, named Redi, was on the dock already. The other one, Shelly, is shy, so only today she started basking. She's fine at the moment. (Oh, btw, none of the turtles are really eating... Their tank is always dirty since my brother puts more than he should [he learned his lesson now; the dirtiness caused the illness in the first place] I'm going to try to make them eat with the tips I've read in the other posts) Redi started to stay on the dock for a long while today (the entire time we had the light on) and his eyes were always closed. We poked him to make sure he was alive, but all he did was slowly jerk back into his shell. When I finally dipped him into the water to wake him up (I thought he was just relishing the heat we finally got, so I let him stay there) he started swimming lopsided. We thought he had RI, but our dad put him in a salt water bath for a while, and now he seems to be all right. But when I put him in the water again (to make sure he was having RI, because I read that usually they tip downward at the head instead at the side, but now that I think about it, it doesn't matter... If he's tipping, he's tipping) he started floating. His limbs were completly withdrawn into his shell and he was just bobbing in the water, head upwards. Sometimes he would swim, but then stay in the position throughout the time. Can someone tell me if he has RI or not? It seems so, but how severe is it? Oh yeah, and he's got a white spot on his shell, probably lacking the vitamin A until now >.< Poor guys.... I can't check it if it's spongy or anything now at the moment (it's too late and I got school tomorrow) but I'll update this post later.
Thx for the help in advance. Please help me, I don't want my brother's turtles to die again. (The first two died from suffocation under a rock. T_T We learned from that mistake.)
