| Re: too much skin |
Subject: Re: too much skin by longhairedgit on 8/11/2007 8:57:44 Many turtles, especially if large tend to lose skin and scutes incessantly,scutes obviously come off in plates, but most of the skin sloughing should be more or less invisible. It might be to do with the way you have them set up, and if they have neither UVB reptile lights or periodic exposure to natural sunlight the shedding of skin and scutes is much more difficult for them. Turtles, and diurnal lizards really need UVB exposure for correct effectiveness of release fats in the skin. These fats saturate just under the old skin to loosen it at periodic sloughing periods defined by a reptiles individual metabolic rate, and without UVB and sunlight these sloughs are less able to produce the release fluids that seperate old skin from new, meaning that patches of skin are retained. In short diurnal reptiles are stimulated to lose skin most effectively with the presence of uvb light in conjunstion with correct temperature, and they need to be getting enough dietary calcium to make the skin thick enough to shed cleanly. Minor fungal and bacterial skin infections will also complicate matter, and with trutles , who are by any standard a filthy aquatic animal, the bacterial level of the water may be very high, thus encouraging such infections. If I recall you filter your water, but its probably underfiltered for the size of your turtles, and TBH most turtle keepers even when filtering their water will still ditch it weekly because they know if they dont it will become a bacterial hell. Unlike fish , turtles couldnt give a damn if the water has chlorine in it or not, they can drink it much as we can and a little tapwater actually helps keep off the odd skin infection. Turtles often retain skin when they have minor fungal infections, especially around the neck where there is quite a bit of wrinkly skin anyway, but it often stays stuck and goes white in suboptimal conditions. These are all the usual infections finrot and fungus bacteria that affect fish, and obviously this is one of the major reasons fish and turtles dont go unless the water filtering is galactically good. If it isnt sorted out , eventually the turtle gets sores, septacaemia, and you either cough up for vet bills and antibiotics or you get a dead turtle. The filter with turtles acts more like a water freshener than true filtration unless you have a positively awesome filter and a large water body. To put it in perspective, a turtle of around a 7 inch shell length could keep an eheim pro 3 filter rated for 200 gals busy all on its own, and it takes that kind of equipment before you stop needing to ditch out the water weekly. Turtles are capable of living in much muckier water than any fish, but there is still an upper limit to that. They still have to drink the water, and their skin will eventually be invaded by common bacteria if things arent clean enough. So tell us what you can about what light they get, how often you change the water, and if they are getting any additional calcium supplements , and we should be able to sort something out that makes skin sloughing less problematic for them. |