Red is 4 today!
Our southern painted turtle, Red, turned 4 today. We're obviously shedding scutes but do we look ok otherwise? When he was smaller I was sure he was a he, but now I think I was wrong, opinons?
I didn't want to disturb basking too much today but I'll be inspecting cloaca and plastron tomorrow, but shell dome height, nails and what I can see of the tail look female to me.
I was a bit concerned about some eye rubbing about 3 weeks ago. I have gone heavy on vitamin A rich foods since and have not seen any continued or new signs or symptoms of anything beyond day 4.
We installed a new basking set-up 2 weeks ago and had a heatwave that necessitated AC and I stupidly forgot to spot check basking temp with the new set-up and ambient temp change. I attributed the hesitancy to bask to the new space but it was actually way too cool at only 79.8°. This was less than 5 min after I put the new bulb in, back at a happy 85-95° gradient.
Tank is a full 75g, sand substrate, seiryu stone, driftwood and random floating clumps of windelov Java fern (because sassy pants doesnt eat them but cuts the stem of every leaf at the rhyzome if I attach it anywhere), 2 PP Cascade cannister filters, 2 24" T5 UVB (one at recommended height over 24" over tank basking and one lower over fabric screen covered open water) and live pothos where it cant be accessed but is still sucking out nitrates.
Diet is daily greens (typically mustard, dandelion, collard, anacharis, red root floaters), carrot a few times a week, pellets 2/week and live calcium dusted insects (typically a few small crickets or a medium dubia) 1/week. Not enough or too much of anything?