Winter Day
New Member
Hello, I’m usually a little bit of a lurker here, but I need to ask a question as I can’t seem to find an answer by browsing the forum.
A bit of background first. My dad ran over a baby box turtle with a lawn mower approximately 6 months ago. When my dad showed it to me one of its eyes didn’t look normal, so I decided to take it in. At the time I didn’t know anything about box turtles. I’ve been slowly learning more to properly care for it however. My mom thought I could just keep it in a bucket with some lettuce. I was highly skeptical, so I started to do some research.
I keep it in a 3’ x 18” tank with a CHE for heat (on a thermostat) and a UVB tube light (on a timer). The temp is about 90 under the bulb with an ambient temp of about 82 on one end and 77 on the other. At night the ambient drops to about 77 and 72. We don’t have much heat in the house as it’s the beginning of winter right now and we only have a few radiators. The temp outside the tank ranges from 60 to 70 with it dropping to about 50 on particularly cold days. The temps are unfortunately only going to drop as it gets further into winter. Humidity currently sits at 60% during the day and 70% during the night. I have some aluminum foil covering the top of the tank to keep the heat and humidity in, but I think the emitter is rapidly drying it out which means I need to spray the tank down at least once a day in the morning. The substrate is made of coco fiber, cypress mulch, small fir bark, and a little bit of New Zealand sphagnum moss. It has two hides, a water bowl (it’s more of a plate so it’s shallow), and a feeding slate. It eats spring mix, dried turtle food (a mix of pellets, mealworms, mushrooms, and strawberries, though I limit its strawberry consumption) and the occasional small piece of tomato, carrot, potato, etc. I plan to eventually feed it some live foods (like worms and mealworms), but I have to convince my parents to buy creepy crawlies.
Anyway, I recently took it to an exotic vet to test for parasites and to get its eye checked. They said the test was fine but said that it’s pupil had an irregular shape and that there was a tiny white mark indicating some trauma along with a little bit of swelling underneath the eye. I mentioned the lawn mower and that it had come from an area that was heavily sprayed with herbicides by the neighbors. The vet said it would be difficult to know exactly what caused it, but they prescribed it some vitamin A. It comes in powder form, and they said to dust the turtle’s food once a day for 10 days and then twice a week after.
Now finally to my question. The bottle says that vitamin A can potentially be dangerous because of overdosing. I’m no expert on reptiles, and I don’t think my parents would be too keen on spending more money getting a second opinion for a turtle given that they think they already spent enough on it. Should I give the turtle the vitamin or do you guys think there’s a better solution?
Sorry for the quality of the pictures. I couldn’t get the camera to focus more than this. If I uploaded the photos incorrectly, let me know. Thanks.
A bit of background first. My dad ran over a baby box turtle with a lawn mower approximately 6 months ago. When my dad showed it to me one of its eyes didn’t look normal, so I decided to take it in. At the time I didn’t know anything about box turtles. I’ve been slowly learning more to properly care for it however. My mom thought I could just keep it in a bucket with some lettuce. I was highly skeptical, so I started to do some research.
I keep it in a 3’ x 18” tank with a CHE for heat (on a thermostat) and a UVB tube light (on a timer). The temp is about 90 under the bulb with an ambient temp of about 82 on one end and 77 on the other. At night the ambient drops to about 77 and 72. We don’t have much heat in the house as it’s the beginning of winter right now and we only have a few radiators. The temp outside the tank ranges from 60 to 70 with it dropping to about 50 on particularly cold days. The temps are unfortunately only going to drop as it gets further into winter. Humidity currently sits at 60% during the day and 70% during the night. I have some aluminum foil covering the top of the tank to keep the heat and humidity in, but I think the emitter is rapidly drying it out which means I need to spray the tank down at least once a day in the morning. The substrate is made of coco fiber, cypress mulch, small fir bark, and a little bit of New Zealand sphagnum moss. It has two hides, a water bowl (it’s more of a plate so it’s shallow), and a feeding slate. It eats spring mix, dried turtle food (a mix of pellets, mealworms, mushrooms, and strawberries, though I limit its strawberry consumption) and the occasional small piece of tomato, carrot, potato, etc. I plan to eventually feed it some live foods (like worms and mealworms), but I have to convince my parents to buy creepy crawlies.
Anyway, I recently took it to an exotic vet to test for parasites and to get its eye checked. They said the test was fine but said that it’s pupil had an irregular shape and that there was a tiny white mark indicating some trauma along with a little bit of swelling underneath the eye. I mentioned the lawn mower and that it had come from an area that was heavily sprayed with herbicides by the neighbors. The vet said it would be difficult to know exactly what caused it, but they prescribed it some vitamin A. It comes in powder form, and they said to dust the turtle’s food once a day for 10 days and then twice a week after.
Now finally to my question. The bottle says that vitamin A can potentially be dangerous because of overdosing. I’m no expert on reptiles, and I don’t think my parents would be too keen on spending more money getting a second opinion for a turtle given that they think they already spent enough on it. Should I give the turtle the vitamin or do you guys think there’s a better solution?
Sorry for the quality of the pictures. I couldn’t get the camera to focus more than this. If I uploaded the photos incorrectly, let me know. Thanks.