The issue: They've been sleeping on the opposite end of the tank as the heater and the filters, during the day for a couple hours a day for the past two weeks. I haven't made any severe changes to their environment (besides cleaning the filters and doing water changes, if that counts as changing their environment even) so I'm just concerned on if they're sick or something. I've checked them both for injuries and there's no sign of anything like that. They don't appear to be sick. They bask regularly and swim around quite regularly too but they've just been sleeping at the bottom of the tank a lot. Not only that but they normally gobble up their greens and lately they've been ignoring them. It's like they're sick of greens or something. So, I changed it up and gave them Kale and Romaine but they didn't even bother with it.
Possible reason: I went away two weeks ago and left my turtles with no one to look after them (I know, I know, I'm a horrible turtle mom!
). However, they were left with half a head of red leaf lettuce to graze from and they were given about five or six Turtle Chases Floating Treats (Clam flavored) so they'd have something else to snack on while I was gone. I left them for maybe 6 full days. When I came home they seemed to be perfectly fine. No injuries or any signs of sickness or anything. They had their basking light on a timer so they had that while I was away. When I came home I immediately did a massive water change (and cleaned the filters) to get the water quality back where it should be.Am I doing something wrong? I've had these guys since August and they've never behaved this way. They don't show any signs of aggression towards each other. (Unless you count fluttering. My smaller turtle fluttered his hands in the face of my bigger one but she just sort of pushed him away and I haven't seen them do it since. Naturally they could be doing it when I'm not around but I've been spending a lot of time watching them. And there hasn't been any nipping or anything but I am watching them carefully to see if there's any harassment going on.)
Is the water temperature in the tank too cold? Too warm? Is it a water quality issue? Are they sick? Are my turtles, god forbid, dying or something? I know it's January and it's freezing outside so maybe their "natural instincts" have kicked in a bit and their bodies are slowing down a bit for winter? I know that doesn't make much sense because they've got a heater and the air temperature of my room is really pretty warm because of the heat that lamp gives off so it's not cold for them at all.
Please help, I don't want anything bad to happen to my turtles. I really do love the wee ones.
Also, I know I'm going to have to get a bigger tank. I understand that I might have to separate my turtles as well if they start fighting/harassing each other. So, I am prepared to do that but for now they seem to like spending time with each other and I'd really rather not separate them if I didn't have to. They're still young (albeit, a little big from being overfed
but I'm cutting back on feeding them so much because it's not healthy for them).Thank you!
-A very concerned turtle mom.
