Loss of Appetite

[carlinsc]

Hi all – new to the group, and excuse my lack of patience with searhing the archives for answers to this topic, but there’s a sick terrapin who needs your help! My wife works at a state park nature center. One of the animals they have there is a 9-10 year old female diamondback terrapin. She has always seemed to be in good health, although probably would be considered to be overweight. She lives in a 40 gallon tank, in a climate controlled building, she has a strip flourescent lamp and a basking lamp with UvB, and once or twice a month, she gets to go outdoors to swim in a pond which is in front of the building, for an hour or so. (the water in her tank is fresh water, and has been that way since she was the size of a quarter – the pond is fresh water also, and fed by a recirculating pump.) In the past three weeks, the terrapin has shown a drastic loss of appetite, and is acting erratically in her tank, very active but almost seems as if she is trying to “get out”. My wife has tried all sorts of food in an attempt to get her to eat, but she doesn’t seem to want anything offered. Fresh shrimp, pellets,fiddler crabs, fish, basically nothing that she has eaten before is being eaten now. Also noticed is a reduction in how much time she spends basking. All she seems to want to do is look panicked and act as if she wants to get out of the tank. Normally, when she goes swimming in the pond outside, she’ll avoid any attempt to pick her up and take her out of the pond. Yesterday, I went to the nature center and supervised the weekly swim. After about 15 minutes, all she wanted to do was get out of the pond. Usually we have to use a net to get her out, but yesterday I had to keep putting her back in the water. In short, her behavior for about 3 weeks is anything but normal. Does anyone have any advice? Thanks in advance, Carl

[Author]

Posts