Leaving town for a week…
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Does anyone have any advice for me? I am leaving town for a week at the Holidays and am worried about my terps. A few questions I have is: 1)I plan on leaving the lamps on over their basking area while I am gone, is this bad for them? 2) food…Should I just feed them well for the next week and leave them for the 8 days. Should I put some fish in the tank that they can hunt? Will they eat the fish? 3)Should I lower the water temp to slow their bodies down? They are 2 juvinile DB’s both about 1 year old. I am trying to find a friend to look after them, but its difficult at the holidays… Thanks for your help.
— In diamondbackterrapins@yahoogroups.com, “manborg22”
Thanks Steve, I will definitely get a timer (don’t know why I didn’t think of that…). I will hopefully get a friend to commit to feeding twice and I will definitely not lower the water temp. Thanks so much!
— In diamondbackterrapins@yahoogroups.com, Troy Putney
If you get a timer for the lights and provide them with some fish, they will be just fine. The fish will provide them with a source of food when they want it, and a source of entertainment (if you haven’t seen a dbt hunt for fish, it’s a good workout). Red rosies work well. I think that getting someone who is inexperienced in handling dbts to come and take care of them could do more harm than good… The dbts that I’ve been exposed to will constantly beg for food when a person has the food container. Someone with no experience might think that they’re still hungry and continue to feed them. Good luck! Adam Steve wrote:
I don’t know where you live, but up here I’d be concerned about power failures, etc. It might be a comfort if you have someone you can trust to come in and check tank temperature, and make sure the filters and bulbs are working. A trick that works well with food amounts is to leave a scoop in the food container and specify how many scoops on which days. Even more mistake proof – get a big pill dispenser and put the correct amount in the days they should be fed. — In diamondbackterrapins@yahoogroups.com, Adam Stradtner
When I have had inexperienced people take care of my aquatic turtles, I have used small ziploc bags and placed one serving of dry flakes/pellets in each bag. Then labelled each bag as to the day to feed and the tank to feed (I put a number on each tank and the corresponding number on each bag). I have also done this with tortoises with bags of greens/veggies in the refrig. It works well and takes all of the guess work out of feeding.
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