Question! (Obviously) haha. Please help?

Question

I just bought two baby turtles yesterday that I absolutely love. Squirt is roughly the size of a quarter not including appendages and Bullet is slightly larger.
I have a water dish for them and the bedding is reptile bark. They seem to be liking it, althought they aren't eating, which I heard is not uncommon after a big change in a young turtle's life.
I have a water dish that they can access but the problem is they have to climb INTO the water to drink and when they get out they get absoultely COVERED in bark, so excessively they look like little porcupines. ;)

How do I get it so that they aren't covered with bark when they get out of the water?

Oops. Sorry. They are baby box turtles. I'm not sure what kind of box turtle...

Tank:
http://i137.photobucket.com/albums/q237/_k_r_i_s_t_e_n_/Turtles001.jpg


Tank (Top View):

http://i137.photobucket.com/albums/q237/_k_r_i_s_t_e_n_/Turtles005.jpg



Squirt:

http://i137.photobucket.com/albums/q237/_k_r_i_s_t_e_n_/Turtles002.jpg


Squirt:

http://i137.photobucket.com/albums/q237/_k_r_i_s_t_e_n_/Turtles003.jpg


Squirt:

http://i137.photobucket.com/albums/q237/_k_r_i_s_t_e_n_/Turtles004.jpg

Answer 1

Lose the bark. A better substrate for now would be reptile moss. Wood chips are too much risk with the babies--they'll eatit and gett impacted. As they get older, a 1/2 and 1/2 mix of sterile playground sand and sterile peat is recommended. Getting their water bowls muddy is a common problem--they need frequent cleaning.
http://boxturtlesite.info/bred.html

http://boxturtlesite.info/bxbook.html

Answer 2

What kind of turtles are they? If they are aquatic turtles, they aren't eating because that is not the right type of set up. They will starve to death. An aquatic turtle, which is what most inexpensive baby turtles in the pet trade are, such as red eared sliders, need to live in water. A couple of inches of water. Give them a floating turtle dock or some large, flat rocks stacked up, so they can come out of the water, but they need to have mostly water. They eat in the water. Aquatic turtles will not eat in the set up you have described. Please find out what kind of turtle you have and make the necessary changes, or you will have two dead turtles.

Answer 3

hi. my girlfriend has a turtle that looks similar to yours but hers is now 15 years old. i would make sure to find out what type of turtles they are. she used to use a green mat on the floor of the tank and had a water dish set up with rocks leading up to the water dish so they can come and go if they wanted. for food she gave them mealworms but it took them about two or three days before they started eating. make sure they have proper uv lights. hope this helps.

Answer 4

Find out if they are aquatic turtles right away. You need to get them in water quickly if they are. They must be in water to eat if they are aquatic. Google it and see if you can find a picture of the one you have, or post a picture of them, and we can tell you right away what kind they are.

Answer 5

thats a 3 toed box turtle very cute too:)

Answer 6

If these are WATER TURTLES and not LAND Tortoises you need to lose the bark and use aquarium gravel, instead. Not only will this make for a cleaner tank but it will keep the turtles from getting sick by eating the bark. Just make sure the gravel is large enough that they can't try to eat it.

It would help EMENSELY to know WHAT KIND of turtles these are!!!

I can help you a LOT if they are Red-Eared Sliders. I used to have a pair of them!

BTW: Are you prepared to care for these turtles for the REST of their lives??? You DO know that depending upon the type they can live for SEVERAL DECADES!!! AND it's against the law to turn them loose....not to mention extremely inhumane!!!! Red-Eared Sliders can live up to 45 years in captivity when correctly cared for!!!

EDIT: The answerer above me is correct. However, you MUST make sure that the depth of the water you provide for them is deep enough that if they get upside-down they can easily flip back over. If they get upside-down in the water they WILL drown!!!

In addition to that, water turtles NEED to EAT IN the water, too!!! This could explain why they aren't eating. What kind of food are you feeding them? RESs get more carnivorous the older they get although they stay mostly omnivorous throughout their lives. Commercial feed is fine for very young turtles. However, more natural foods are a good idea to add to the commercial food as the turtles get older. NEVER feed them Spinach!!! It is poisonous to them.

In effect, with water turtles you MUST set up a _dual_ habitat. One side is the water and the other is a place where they can haul up under a heat lamp to thermoregulate and allow their shells to completely dry. If they can't completely dry they can get shell rot which can become extremely leathal.

Separate the HIGHER gravel surface with rock that does NOT contain lime. Lime will kill the turtles and any fish you put in for them to eat. They won't eat dead fish! You can use large rock from Aquarium shops to make your shelf with. Just make sure that it is quite easy for these turtles to climb up on the shelf. This is where you need to install a heat lamp and keep the temp up there at about a constant 108° F. The water can be kept at between 75° to 80° in the summer and a bit cooler in the winter to encourage a sort of hibernation. Turtles in the wild go into full hibernation in the winter but captive ones still stay active because of the artificial environment.

In addition to the heat lamp, a flouresent fixture needs to be installed to put a UVA/UVB bulb in to simulate the Sun. Turtles NEED this type of light for good health! I put both my fixtures on a timer so that the lights would automatically turn on and off. I constantly changed the times of the timer to match the natural daylight hours.

You need a GOOD STRONG water filtration system because turtles are dirty by nature. They have no choice but to urinate and deficate in their own water...especially in an artificial environment!!!

AND, you also need to go back to the pet store where you bought them and get calcium supplelments for them until they are grown. Red-Eared Sliders get about the size of a regular dinner plate. They reach full maturity at about five years of age. There is also a salve that you put on their shells to keep them supple so they don't crack. In addition, there are little turtle-shaped tablets to put in the water that not only supplies calcium but combats Salmonella bacteria. You want to make DOUBLE sure that while you're handling your turtles you don't touch anything else and that you wash your hands with sanitizer afterwards!!!

Like I said, IF these are in deed Red-Eared Sliders, I can help you with ideas on building your dual habitat for them. I built two for mine. One in a ten gal tank until they outgrew it and the second in a 35 gal tank...the smallest recommended for RESs. I also built a CORRECT dual habitat for the Army Corpse of Engineers Vistor's Center for a dam near where I live who had water turtles in a tank. I re-built the thing from scratch in a similar fashion as my own tanks.

Unfortunately, when I was widowed I had to give up my Red Eared Sliders because I could no longer afford to keep them. Thank God, the County was able to take them for me. I know that with them they will have a good forever home until they die and in the mean time are being used to educate people such as yourself.

I hope this helps both you AND your turtles. Good Luck!...and if you need help, you can contact me through my Profile here in Answers.

EDIT #2: The above was written BEFORE the links to pix were posted. I'm leaving it as originally posted because the pix sure LOOK like Red-Eared Sliders, at least to me, anyway. Maybe you can take a pic of the turtle while "in it's box" with its shell closed up???

Answer 7

you could use indoor/outdoor carpeting, that is easy to clean and will not coat your wet turtles