Urgent Care :: Is my turtle sick?

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Post Posted: Wed May 18, 2016 4:53 am   Is my turtle sick?

I've been looking up illnesses symptoms but none seems to match exactly.

She has lack of appetite (very general symptom), she has been eating less for about 2 weeks and today she didn't eat at all, she is lethargic too.

The weirdest symptom I can't find on common illnesses is that she looks 'heavy', she tends to sink to the bottom of the tank, and I think she needs to swim harder than usual to get to the surface, in fact, when she takes breath she rapidly sinks to the bottom again, falling down like a rock, in this respect she is now always looking for something to lean on (ramp or plants), she is usually keeping her head down too.


I'm attaching a couple of pictures:

Image

Image
tringlee55
 
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Post Posted: Wed May 18, 2016 12:15 pm   Re: Is my turtle sick?

Hard to tell from the pics, but she does look a little bit bloated. It would be a good idea to take her to a vet.
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steve
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Post Posted: Fri May 20, 2016 5:27 pm   Re: Is my turtle sick?

I think I just discovered the problem, I saw her 'defecating' what looks like WORMS!

I'm attaching two pictures:

Image

Image
tringlee55
 
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Post Posted: Fri May 20, 2016 8:02 pm   Re: Is my turtle sick?

Yikes! Collect a few and bring it to a vet. It could be a parasite and knowing the kind you have to deal with is important when figuring out the medication. Any idea how she could have gotten it?
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Post Posted: Fri May 20, 2016 9:40 pm   Re: Is my turtle sick?

looks like the same parasites my brothers guppies had poo'd out as well.. Blyah, its disgusting...

Have you been feeding your turtle fish?
Fish keeper & Turtle know it all... Ish
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Rizvan
 
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Post Posted: Sat May 21, 2016 12:56 pm   Re: Is my turtle sick?

steve wrote:Yikes! Collect a few and bring it to a vet. It could be a parasite and knowing the kind you have to deal with is important when figuring out the medication. Any idea how she could have gotten it?

Rizvan wrote:looks like the same parasites my brothers guppies had poo'd out as well.. Blyah, its disgusting...

Have you been feeding your turtle fish?


I have been looking at some images of similar white strings like that, and it seems to be a parasite, specifically tapeworms (cestoda).

I took a sample of it (another sample of stool too) for the veterinary to analyze it. The problem was that I took it out of the water using one of those green fish nets, so when I tried to take it off the net I wasn't able to do it without breaking it in a lot of small pieces, which eventually ended up joining together, conforming a chunk without a particular shape, so it didn't look like a worm anymore.

When I showed the pictures I posted above to the vet she immediately said that it was clearly a parasite, but after seeing the chunk in the tube she began to hesitate, she says that these worms do not break so easily, and maybe it would be another thing, like intestinal mucus secretion. Then she observed it with the microscope and said that it doesn't look like a worm, because it didn't have the body rings or head or tail, she was just seeing a mucus-like dough. However, when she observed the stool she found one (and only one) nematode egg...


Before going to the vet I consulted some webpages to be sure they were not going to give her some toxic medication (they are specialized on exotics but you never know), I took as reference this table: http://www.austinsturtlepage.com/Care/medications.htm

According to that, Ivermectin and Levamisole should be avoided. Well, surprisingly she was going to give her a Levamisole shot, I told her that I'd prefer a safer medication and she gave her Panacur orally. She used a metallic catheter to introduce the liquid directly to the stomach, I don't know if this is the normal procedure, but it was really really dramatic the way she had to pull her head out of the shell... I thought she was going to break her neck or something, really painful to see.

In any case, my concern now is that maybe the worm that she defecated is not the same that they found on the stool so the medication could be doing nothing... or even the egg she saw was a cestoda and not a nematode, in which case the medication would do nothing either... the truth is that I don't really trust them too much after realizing that they were going to give her a toxic medication... and even anticipating which medication they were going to use before knowing which parasite was.



EDIT: Sorry, I forgot to answer your question about the food. What’s ‘funny’ about this is that they are probably the indirect responsibles about this situation, I took my turtle to them a month ago to a regular check, and they advised me to give her fish (not live, just fish from the fish market). A week after following their advice my turtle began to eat less and look like sick, of course, the cause was the fish, I was giving it fresh, without previous freezing, so she probably got the parasites this way, they didn’t tell me that I had to freeze it first, and now, today in the visit when I told them the cause they said “oh! of course you have to freeze it first”, well, they didn’t tell me to do it…
tringlee55
 
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Post Posted: Sat May 21, 2016 4:37 pm   Re: Is my turtle sick?

As I understand the subject, the only safe raw fish to feed is saltwater fish. I was thinking tape worms with the first picture as well.
1 Male Mississippi Map/Mississippi
1 Female RES/Slidy.
1 DBT White Concentric Female/ Lucky
1 DBT Male/ Spots
(Housed in the same tank)

300 gallon indoor stock tank, FX6 & FX5 filters. Mega-Ray 100w UVB bulb.
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Kansasslider
 
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Post Posted: Sat May 21, 2016 4:38 pm   Re: Is my turtle sick?

Was the fish freshwater fish?
1 Male Mississippi Map/Mississippi
1 Female RES/Slidy.
1 DBT White Concentric Female/ Lucky
1 DBT Male/ Spots
(Housed in the same tank)

300 gallon indoor stock tank, FX6 & FX5 filters. Mega-Ray 100w UVB bulb.
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Kansasslider
 
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Post Posted: Sat May 21, 2016 9:49 pm   Re: Is my turtle sick?

tringlee55 wrote:
steve wrote:Yikes! Collect a few and bring it to a vet. It could be a parasite and knowing the kind you have to deal with is important when figuring out the medication. Any idea how she could have gotten it?

Rizvan wrote:looks like the same parasites my brothers guppies had poo'd out as well.. Blyah, its disgusting...

Have you been feeding your turtle fish?


I have been looking at some images of similar white strings like that, and it seems to be a parasite, specifically tapeworms (cestoda).

I took a sample of it (another sample of stool too) for the veterinary to analyze it. The problem was that I took it out of the water using one of those green fish nets, so when I tried to take it off the net I wasn't able to do it without breaking it in a lot of small pieces, which eventually ended up joining together, conforming a chunk without a particular shape, so it didn't look like a worm anymore.

When I showed the pictures I posted above to the vet she immediately said that it was clearly a parasite, but after seeing the chunk in the tube she began to hesitate, she says that these worms do not break so easily, and maybe it would be another thing, like intestinal mucus secretion. Then she observed it with the microscope and said that it doesn't look like a worm, because it didn't have the body rings or head or tail, she was just seeing a mucus-like dough. However, when she observed the stool she found one (and only one) nematode egg...


Before going to the vet I consulted some webpages to be sure they were not going to give her some toxic medication (they are specialized on exotics but you never know), I took as reference this table: http://www.austinsturtlepage.com/Care/medications.htm

According to that, Ivermectin and Levamisole should be avoided. Well, surprisingly she was going to give her a Levamisole shot, I told her that I'd prefer a safer medication and she gave her Panacur orally. She used a metallic catheter to introduce the liquid directly to the stomach, I don't know if this is the normal procedure, but it was really really dramatic the way she had to pull her head out of the shell... I thought she was going to break her neck or something, really painful to see.

In any case, my concern now is that maybe the worm that she defecated is not the same that they found on the stool so the medication could be doing nothing... or even the egg she saw was a cestoda and not a nematode, in which case the medication would do nothing either... the truth is that I don't really trust them too much after realizing that they were going to give her a toxic medication... and even anticipating which medication they were going to use before knowing which parasite was.



EDIT: Sorry, I forgot to answer your question about the food. What’s ‘funny’ about this is that they are probably the indirect responsibles about this situation, I took my turtle to them a month ago to a regular check, and they advised me to give her fish (not live, just fish from the fish market). A week after following their advice my turtle began to eat less and look like sick, of course, the cause was the fish, I was giving it fresh, without previous freezing, so she probably got the parasites this way, they didn’t tell me that I had to freeze it first, and now, today in the visit when I told them the cause they said “oh! of course you have to freeze it first”, well, they didn’t tell me to do it…


Yeah, it was probably the fish that gave him the parasites. Still, I'm also wandering what type of fish you fed him like kansasslider..
Fish keeper & Turtle know it all... Ish
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Rizvan
 
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Post Posted: Sun May 22, 2016 1:44 pm   Re: Is my turtle sick?

You can freeze the fish before hand.
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steve
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Post Posted: Sun May 22, 2016 1:47 pm   Re: Is my turtle sick?

Sushi anyone :-)
1 Male Mississippi Map/Mississippi
1 Female RES/Slidy.
1 DBT White Concentric Female/ Lucky
1 DBT Male/ Spots
(Housed in the same tank)

300 gallon indoor stock tank, FX6 & FX5 filters. Mega-Ray 100w UVB bulb.
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Kansasslider
 
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Post Posted: Sun May 22, 2016 1:53 pm   Re: Is my turtle sick?

Not me :D
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steve
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Post Posted: Sun May 22, 2016 1:54 pm   Re: Is my turtle sick?

lol :D
Fish keeper & Turtle know it all... Ish
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Rizvan
 
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Post Posted: Mon May 23, 2016 8:28 am   Re: Is my turtle sick?

I have been observing the bottom of the tank and I can see more of those white long strings, which now I think that they are not real worms (as the vet said), I think that they are just some kind of mucus that surround her feces.

On the other hand, today I can assure I have seen real worms (much smaller than those white strings), and not only one, in fact there are dozens of small worms moving all over the bottom and the walls of the tank. So I think the vet was right on that matter, the white long strings were not tapeworms, what my turtle really has are nematodes.

What should I do now? Do I have to change the water or I'd have to wait until she takes out all? Will those worms die there? And especially, can the worms in the water get inside the turtle again?. I have read that I should change the water every time she defecates because her feces are full of eggs that would get inside her and re-infect her, obviously I cannot change the water so often...


I'm attaching some pictures:

Image

Image

Image

Image



Answering to your question about what food I gave to her, it was salmo, squid, hake, anchovy, cuttelfish and gilt-head bream, everything raw without previous freezing.
tringlee55
 
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Post Posted: Mon May 23, 2016 8:46 am   Re: Is my turtle sick?

Amazing pictures. I do not think it was mucus, I have not seen it in that form before. Are you sure that's not some sort of larva?

Basically, drying everything out is the way to go. Have your turtle out long enough so the poop is made out of the tank. Let the surfaces of the tank and filter dry out, and replace the filter media.
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