General Care Discussion :: Greenbean is eating his ramp

[TheBean]

Ok, first, I know this is a turtle loving forum, but I'm going to have a bit of human emotion here and say that I'm so pissed right now I can't see straight.

Ever since Bean got his new tank and new basking area, he's been attacking and biting pieces off of his ramp! Those pieces then float around in the tank and clog the filter. Then I have to shut the filter off, pull it all apart, get water all over me and the floor, unclog it, then chase the remaining floating ramp bits around the tank with the net for an hour. This has happened 3 times in the past week.

Here's his ramp about 2 weeks ago:


Here it is today:


I have a cuddle bone in there. he gets fed plenty of food every day. Why...the F...is he doing this?

I have since taken his ramp out.

[TheBean]

Looks like I'm not the only one. viewtopic.php?f=5&t=36051

Bean's not pink anywhere though and appears perfectly healthy.

Also, that is the SAME ramp he had in his big stock tank back in TX. He never ate it there. Just started in this new tank.

[steve]

Yup, one of the reasons I dislike the Zoo Med docks. A suitable replacement would be an acrylic one. If Bean is very bitey (some RES just are) you might want to think about cork bark.

[TheBean]

The silly thing is he never ate this ramp while in his old tank. He was in that old tank for 5 years!

I don't speak turtle, but if I did, I'd probably say something like, "Hey Brainchild! Don't you know you're eating the ONLY way you have to get out of the water?"

Can you give me an example of an acrylic ramp? The pet store only carries the floating ones like he has...well...had.

[steve]

The kind that looks like this:


Turtles can do weird things after tank moves. A pretty common problem is fighting after they moved to a larger tank.

[TheBean]

I had some left over egg crate and got creative.



If he chews this up, his new home will be the toilet.

[steve]

Has he been using it with out a problem? Some keepers usually add some reptile carpet or shelf liner for some traction.

[TheBean]

He actually spent the night on it last night. He was on it when I went to bed and on it before his basking lamp even turned on this morning. It seems he likes it.

He doesn't seem to have any issues getting up on it.

[steve]

Well, good to know it was an easy solution

[TheBean]

True. I was getting really tired of pulling the Rena apart. The manual says it's self-priming. LIES!

[steve]

Which Rena do you have?

[xcristina]

Same thing happened to Bobo a few years ago. Started without any apparent reason and didn't stop until I took it out. Last summer I tried to put the...rest of the Zoomed dock into a kiddie pool to bring her outside for a while, the first thing she did when she was in was to attack the poor dock.