Hi guys
I have two red eared sliders who are about 8 months old. The breeder I bought them from sold me expensive food which they enjoyed but their shells started pyramidding after a few months even though I wasn't over feeding them. I got rid of that terrible quality food and for the past four months they've been feeding mainly on Omega Juvenile turtle food and I've seen huge improvements on their shells. They've always had a Repti Glo 5.0 lamp for basking, water from a tap filter with no chlorine etc plus decent filtration in the tank, water temp of 26 degrees Celsius. I must admit that since getting a big tank for them, their basking temp hasn't been much warmer than the water and they haven't been basking much.. I have bought an IR basking lamp and fitted it in addition to the repti glo and now their basking temp is 29 degrees Celsius. They're now basking well but I've run into some issues. Two weeks ago during daily inspection I noticed an abscess on the underside of the one turtles shell, the shell was soft where the abscess had pushed through. I rushed my turtle to the vet immediately who cleaned out the puss with a needle, cleaned it and gave a shot of antibiotics aswell as vitamin A. The turtle has been doing fine but I did notice that my vet injected the turtle above the back leg and that spot hadn't really healed well from the needle..
Unfortunately I noticed yesterday that the other turtle has taken to chasing the treated turtle and had bitten him on the area which had been injected into. I took him out of the water to see that he had a swollen wound in that area and on closer inspection, one of the scutes on the tail end of the underside of his shell is slightly loose... the rear edge of his shell on top is slightly soft (definitely different to before) too. I am really panicking as vets here have no real experience with turtles and I feel very alone. Today I see that the wound looks infected above the leg. He is still very active, swimming, eating and all but I can see he doesn't swim with the hurt leg as per normal but he can still if necessary.
This morning I raced to the store, bought another repti glo 5.0 and a heating pad. I setup a tank for dry docking of decent size. The heating pad is inside a pillow case with another one on top for a comfy surface, the UVB bulb in the centre of the tank and the temp in the tank is 28.5 degrees Celsius. I coated his Omega pellets in calcium+D3 supplement, let him eat and then put him in the dry tank. It's completely covered with a blanket for privacy and he is quite calm in there. He's very tame and happily eats from my hand etc.
I'm not sure which is the best and most effective way to treat his shell condition nor the infected wound but I'm a bit of a wreck and won't sleep tonight unless I know he's going to be fine. As I mentioned, veterinary care for turtles is non existent in this part of the world and it's a problem for me.
Just check on him now and after 5 hours 30 minutes of being dry docked, the shell feels a fair bit more solid than it did when wet but still is not right.
Any help would be greatly appreciated.
