Shell and skin problems

[Jonathan]

Jonathan

January 29, 2001 at 8:50 pm #14186

I have gotten several terrapins that had very bad shell and skin problems. One female terrapin, I found at a local pet store looked so ill that the owners put the turtle in a bucket with no water for over two weeks waiting for it to die, so they could get their money back from the seller. When I found it at the store it’s entire body was covered in fungus, her tail looked like it was going to fall off, most of the meat was gone from her tail. And her jaw was black and cracked down to the skin. I took her home and put her in a tank with a small amount of saltwater and ‘Super Sulfa’. Everyday I soaked her in ‘Acriflavin Plus’ for about any hour. I feed her lots of cricks and smelt. After a week most of her skin problems cleared up and her tail started to fill out again. About half of the lower jaw fell off, all the down to the skin. Even with part of her jaw missing she still eat good. I kept feeding her a lot of fish and within a few months her jaw grew back. That was a year and a half ago, now she is healthy and acts like every other terrapin I have. Her shell doesn’t have any color do to the fungus, but hopefully when she sheds the top layer of her shell she will look like new. I got six terrapins from a private party a couple of years ago and all of them had shell rot. I used Betadine without much success. I then tried ‘Acriflavin Plus’ I got much better results with it. One turtle from that group I have been battling shell problems since I got her. I finally think I beat it. I use to change out the water in the turtle pond every week. Since I started changing out the water every other month and adding the proper amount salt to the water. I have not had any more shell problems. I also started feeding the turtles separately from the pond. Anytime that I start seeing shell or skin problems I use Acriflavin and I have never had any bad results. A few weeks ago a snakeneck and two blacknobbed sawback turtles stopped eating and swimming all at the same time. I cleaned out their tank and added one teaspoons for every five gallons of water. After only a day they all started eating and swimming like normally again. If anyone else uses Acriflavin please let me know. I hope this helps Jonathan

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