First of all, let me say – I know it’s time for a Herp Vet. I am stuck at work today, and this weekend, and I have to cover a co-workers vacation next week - so I cannot even take a day off for a while. I don’t know when I’ll be able to locate a vet, make an appointment, and get the turtles there. I’m looking for any help, advice, or whatever in the meantime.
I posted a thread about a week ago. I had placed 3 turtles in the same tank on an emergency short term basis. I thought I had a biting problem when I saw turtle snap at another’s neck after having previously snapped at toes. I checked out the “victim turtle” and noted white spots on it’s neck that I thought to be wounds from attacks. Here’s that thread: viewtopic.php?f=4&t=28456
SO – I immediately separated them, and started dry docking the injured turtle, letting her dry out for an hour or so, applying Neosporin to the wounds on her neck, then keeping her dry docked another hour or so to allow the ointment to work. Honestly, I haven’t given her that many treatments – I think 3 or 4 times in the last week. I was feeling like I need to be doing more of the same, but now I just don’t know. It’s getting worse. There was one large spot on the back of her neck and two smaller ones adjacent to it, but with green turtle skin between the spots. Now, two of the spot have “connected” where I know there was green skin in between before.
There is a thread in this section, this week, titled “Skin abrasion” (link: viewtopic.php?f=4&t=28339 ) What I’m dealing with looks a lot like that, but a lot worse.
I’m starting to think that maybe it’s caused by retracting her head into her shell? Here’s another thing, these are “rescue” turtles and they had a very bad life before – long story, but they were kept very wrong. The turtle in question had terrible retained scutes. It took almost a year of proper keeping before she started to shed. She is in the process of shedding still, and not done yet. She’s almost 7” and I’m sure she has literally never shed until recently. Right behind her neck is a funny little scute about a ¼” wide that sticks strait out about ¼” or more. She seems to have shed the maginal scutes to the right and the left leaving just that one small narrow retained scute sticking WAY out like dagger.
To further complicate things – her tank mate also has a white spot on the back of her neck now. She could also have retained marginal scutes, she came from the same place, but I thought she had nicely completed her shed. Her shell looks great (so does the other’s, where it has shed). Could it still be biting – maybe a habbit these two long time tank mates picked up from their temporary tank mate? I have been watching and haven’t observed any biting or aggression.
Being an unidentified skin condition that is now showing up with the tank mate, I have to wonder about communicable disease. Is that a possibility?
It looks very bad. It looks like all of the skin sluffing off the back of her neck, leaving sickly large white patches with pink flesh visible in the center of the wounds. I will try to take my work camera home at lunch and snap some pictures so that I could post them to this thread this afternoon. I will fill out the “usual questions” and post that to this thread as well.
I’m sorry about the long post, but I felt it was all relevant and I am just out of ideas, and worried. Any help or suggestions would be greatly appreciated.
Would these types of bites be something that might start to look a bit worse before it starts to look better? That’s my biggest concern now is not seeing any improvement, in fact, it is looking worse.