Treating shell rot at home
Hi, I'm new here
I have a 3 1/2 inch RES named Tikka, which I got for free from someone (she said she can't take care of it). I have Tikka for three months now. She has a diet of pellets, kale, carrots, cabbage, live guppy fry (rarely), and sometimes apples and grapes as a treat. She has a tank near an opened window and her tank can hold 3.5 gallons (I'm going to buy her a bigger one 'cause it's very small for her). She has a filter and I do water change weekly. No heater. Daily temps are around 80 degrees in the morning. She also has a homemade basking area above the tank. I figured out that she has shell rot on her first month here. I treated her with betadine for 2 months and dry docked her for eight hours outside our balcony since I don't have a basking light. I noticed that she wasn't getting better so I bought Dyfazine cream (It has silver sulfadiazine) and I increased her dry docking hours to more than 21 hours each day, plus I added crushed eggshells to her daily diet. I think her carapace seemed to improve in a few days.
3 days ago, I just noticed that she has a soft area on both sides of her plastron near her back legs. I scraped the soft areas with a blunt knife and now its whitish pink and has a bit of clear discharge. No foul smell. She's not yet lethargic and still eats. Any advice on treating this? Or should I just continue applying betadine and Dyfazine cream and dry docking her for some weeks? I don't have enough money to take her to the vet
. I took her out to walk at the park today for some direct sunlight. I'm not sure if walking in the ground can make shell rot worse though.
These are the soft spots
I have a 3 1/2 inch RES named Tikka, which I got for free from someone (she said she can't take care of it). I have Tikka for three months now. She has a diet of pellets, kale, carrots, cabbage, live guppy fry (rarely), and sometimes apples and grapes as a treat. She has a tank near an opened window and her tank can hold 3.5 gallons (I'm going to buy her a bigger one 'cause it's very small for her). She has a filter and I do water change weekly. No heater. Daily temps are around 80 degrees in the morning. She also has a homemade basking area above the tank. I figured out that she has shell rot on her first month here. I treated her with betadine for 2 months and dry docked her for eight hours outside our balcony since I don't have a basking light. I noticed that she wasn't getting better so I bought Dyfazine cream (It has silver sulfadiazine) and I increased her dry docking hours to more than 21 hours each day, plus I added crushed eggshells to her daily diet. I think her carapace seemed to improve in a few days.
3 days ago, I just noticed that she has a soft area on both sides of her plastron near her back legs. I scraped the soft areas with a blunt knife and now its whitish pink and has a bit of clear discharge. No foul smell. She's not yet lethargic and still eats. Any advice on treating this? Or should I just continue applying betadine and Dyfazine cream and dry docking her for some weeks? I don't have enough money to take her to the vet
These are the soft spots