I feel completely horrible after reading everything on this forum. I have been a horrible mommy and I've given into to "begging" and have a chubby little turtle and a guilty conscious. I knew before that their housing situation isn't adequate for two turtles, but now I feel even worse about it.
All things will be rectified in time, but how do I correct the problem that I've created?
I've already been cutting back from when I didn't know better. I was going by the,"Yeah just feed them as much as they'll eat in 10 mins" Should I take them outside and make them run around? I keep a leaf of kale, collard green, and spinach (yes I now know spinach is BAD) a cuttle bone (I was unaware you had to remove the backing =( ) floating in their main tank. There are also 2 feeder fish that will probably take them a month if not longer to want to actually eat them. Having given up on a filtration system to keep the tank clean enough not to have to change the water every other day, we now have a feeder tank. In the feeder tank I drop a teaspoon of Fluker's Buffet Blend and a pinch of meal worms. Morla will either eat pellets or meal worms. There was like a whole week when she turned her nose at our pellets and would only eat meal worms. (I hadn't figured out how to feed her veggies because the pet store kept telling me to put them in a dish. I ended up getting rid of the dish and just leaving the whole leaves on the turtle dock. They drug it down into the water and munched which made me happy. I was told to starve them until they eat their veggies, which I had a HUGE problem with being that Morla begs so much) So anyway, they don't always eat when I put them in the feeder tank.(I waste a ton of pellets and they refuse to eat soggy ones) It seems like they're too distracted by being in a new tank and getting out? (I'm assuming that's what they're trying to when they swim against the glass) So lately I'll put them in there once or twice a day.(although I had a heart to heart with Morla this morning to let her know we'll be cutting back on her pellet intake) Captain Spaulding must innately know not to eat everything because he doesn't eat every time I put him in the feeder tank, he just looks at me like,"I wasn't the one begging for food, why do I have to come in here?" Once a week on Tuesdays I buy them 30 or so large crickets and feed them those with the pellets in the feeder tank and still have veggies floating around in their main tank.
They both do their own thing. It seems like Morla hogs the turtle dock. They have an indoor set up with a UV bulb and basking light, (not sure of wattage).
Depending on how busy I am, or how stressed they seem after the last trip outside I've been taking them outside 1-3 a week for 10-30 mins at time. I let them go where ever as long as they don't get too close to the neighbors fence, anything that looks like they have an opportunity to dig and escape or has spiderwebs. (Morla thinks its fun to plow right through them but then gets frustrated when she gets the web stuck on her face). They'll do good as far as moving around and walking a long way. Morla has warmed up to me and will now come to me and chill out under my legs, she even tried to climb in my pant leg a couple times. I don't know if this behavior is her way of bonding, or her saying,"Hey big thing, make us back at home." or if she just wants shade or what. This is a new behavior since she was very busy trying to make her escape before. When both of them end up chilling underneath me I figure they want to go home and so I bring them back inside. Do we need to be outside more?! Cptn Spaulding does his swimming exercises at night where he'll just swim to the top then swim to the bottom over and over again. He's seems to be my "I know the right way to take care of myself" turtle. He's the smaller of the two but he's the one that eats the veggies and makes use of his cuttle bone. For the first month it seemed he wouldn't take the pellets from the top of the water but would instead eat from the bottom and then make food stashes. He can't do this anymore because of the feeder tank. It seemed like one day he was showing me how he was training to be a strong turtle. He was upset after our towel incident, (i was worried about them getting dizzy from me carrying them outside, so I placed them in a towel and covered them) he looked at me then chomped down on his cuttle bone. It was like he was saying,"YEAH! You see this?! I'm going to have a strong beak!"