Urgent Care

My female 7 year old red eared slider has this line down the middle of her bottom shell and if I run my finger nail over the line I can feel it like it’s a scratch. Is this normal? Please help. It also seems that she has shell rot. Please take a look at this video and help me as soon as possible. Also is she fat or underweight??
[youtube] https://youtu.be/F_PF2u9qnVg [/youtube]

The seam looks fine, unless I'm missing something from the video. She looks OK overall.

So the fact that if I run my nail along that line in the shell is fine. This is normal?

the one going straight down the center? or is it something else I missed?

Yes the one down the middle. Also I am in the pet store right now and I would like to know if turtle fix is worth buying. I use melafix on my red eared slider and I don’t know if that is harming her and I don’t know what the difference between turtle fix and melafix is. Should I finish out my bottle of melafix and then next time buy turtle fix?

Usually tell people to skip turtle fix and most turtle-specific products. I wouldn't use melafix either, you're probably over thinking all of this. put more effort in to a correct habitat and diet.

So the crack down the middle is just her pattern? And saying that does melafix hurt the turtle?

The crack down the middle is just where the scutes meet up. As for the melafix, you are using an antibiotic not intended for turtles and who is not sick.

This morning, she was in her nesting box, and bit a coconut chip. The coconut chip was quite big, and as soon as she bit it I picked her up and kinda jiggled her. She then opened her mouth, but I do not know if she ate it in one bite or dropped it out of her mouth. Do you think she could eat a coconut wood chip in one bite if it is wider then a cuttlebone. When she bit it, about 1-2 centimeters on each end of the chip were not covered by her mouth. My question is, with those measurements, do you think it is possible she ate it in one bite. Also after she opened her mouth (when she either ate it or dropped it) she didn’t have a bump in her neck, nor did she make a forward bite motion like she usually does when eating something like pellets or kale. She had it in her mouth, opened her mouth, and then it either fell out of her mouth or she ate and swallowed it in one bite without showing any signs of chewing. Do you think she dropped it. My mom thinks so but we aren’t sure.

Also she ate kale 2 seconds after the whole moment and we saw no wood chip in her mouth.

Hard to know if she ate it from the description, but it's certainly possible. Hopefully it wasn't a large piece.

A little update. When we took her to the vet a couple weeks ago, they said she had 3 pebbles that she ate and had to pass. After this mornings incident, she is still eating and pooping (sorry for the gross sounding words). She actually just passed the 3rd and final rock. Also the chip she might have eaten this morning was bigger than her head, and she showed no signs of a lump in her neck after opening her mouth (as in opening her mouth to eat/drop it). She also didn’t even show signs of chewing or swallowing anything, and continued to eat kale right after. Also when she opened her mouth (again I mean opened her mouth to drop or eat it), I had her picked up vertically with her head facing down. It’s hard to think she moved her head to catch the chip and one mouthed and swallowed without chewing a whole coconut chip. With this better description, do you still think she might have ate the chip?

Maybe she just had a piece of it. Why does she have a nesting box?

The vet said that she needs a box with sand and coconut coir (which we had coconut chips but just got the coir. We didn’t know the difference) so she can dig, which stimulates the hormones for her to lay eggs. She was egg bound and had 13 eggs to lay.

Oh, didn't know she was gravid. Was she able to lay them yet?

Urgent Care :: HELP URGENT Red Eared Slider might have cracked shell

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