Help; heartbreaker on my hands!

[TerryTerrapin]

Terry, my male mediterranean map turtle, is at a guess 1-3 years old

I've made the mistake before of overfeeding. He's good at pretending he's STARVING. As a result he shed excessively, but this resolved once I scaled back the feeding.

In the last couple of weeks his behaviour around food seems erratic. He sees me, he flaps at the edge of the tank, I feed him, and he flaps for more until I leave the area and he realises, "oh that's all I'm getting huh? Okay mom." He eats the pellets so fast! Sometimes he's too frantic to realise I've even put any food in there. But he eventually sees it.

Now, the problems are as such: He's eating his poo. I'm guessing 100% of the time he's eating it, because for the last couple of weeks I've never seen any in the tank - until I caught him do it one day! Like immediately after pooping, when he sees it, it's eaten. I know some animals do this but surely this level of frequency is unhealthy?
Secondly, he's biting at his basking rock and other items in the tank. He's trying to eat it. He thinks it's food. My only concern would be he damages his mouth, until just now when I (LUCKILY!) caught him with this in his mouth (see attached pic). He couldn't swallow it but he was trying. He let me take it out with a tweezers and I can't observe any injury. But I searched and searched and can't find where he got it from. There's no substrate. the rock has some plastic plants but they're not the same colour. What was in his mouth was soft and spongy, but I can't find any corresponding soft/spongy rock parts to even guess where it came from

I seem to not be able to get the feeding frequency right with Terry! First it was too much, now he's genuinely acting like it's too little!

 

[wellington]

Possibly he has worms or a parasite that is making him so hungry all the time and making him try to eat everything? Possibly the amount you are feeding isn't enough or the food you are feeding isn't giving him what he needs. Someone with turtle experience should be along soon.

 

[TortsNTurtles]

Eating poo is normal ....yucky. Offer greens so hopefully your turtle will pick on the greens instead of the dock etc. I throw in large leaves and my turtle picks on it throughout the day. The also sell salad clips you can suction cup the leaves to the side of the tank if the leaves keep getting stuck to the filter that I used when Gamera was smaller.

ps. cute turtle!

 

[ETTB1314]

I actually have the same problem, just that they don't try to eat everything.

 

[TerryTerrapin]

Update: I found out what he was trying to eat - it was the black glue what holds up his turtle dock. This is good that he didn't get it from his rock, I can put that back in now, he missed it

Well hopefully that 'glue' is non-toxic as he had had it in his mouth for so long when I took it out it was white!

 

[dmmj]

Waater turtles eat, and eat, and eat, and then eat some more.. Eating poop is normal as well ( although yucky), trying to bite everything is normal as well. All around it is all pretty much normal water turtle behaviour.

 

[tglazie]

dmmj is absolutely correct. This behavior is normal. A single leaf of collard, kale or romaine often does the trick at occupying the exceptionally hungry ones like yours, as well as a floating piece of cuttlebone. I once had this one little male yellow bellied slider that I'd fished out of a local drainage ditch (I live in South Texas, so he was, obviously, a released pet; I'm not the sort to go about stealing wild turtles from their natural range) who would try to eat his turtle dock. It got to the point that I just had to substitute a large floating cork bark slab dangled by fishing line from the screen top of his tank, and he would still take chunks out of it. He mangled the fishing line so regularly, I was changing the line every time I cleaned his tank. He was also a mean little bugger, viciously snapping at me any time I pulled him from the water during cleanings, dashing about, making all those whispy sounding scratchy noises against the plastic bottom of the bucket. I love that sound. That is the sound of a bold and determined turtle.

But yeah, the begging thing is normal too. You just have to regulate food intake according to how pudgy they look, regardless of how much they beg or how much poop they eat. Turtles will eat until they die if you let them. In the wild, natural scarcity acts to restrict weight gain. In captivity, rich food in pellet form must be limited to what proves to maintain a turtle's healthy weight. Frequency of feeding is also of key concern. My strategy has always been that babies eat a high protein meal once per day. Once they reach a year, cut them down to one high protein meal every other day and a leaf of collard, romaine, or a stalk of elodea replenished as it is eaten. If the leaf starts to turn before the turtle finishes, cut down on the amount of green material until the turtle is finishing or mostly finishing his or her greens. With my adult southern paints, I feed them two high protein meals per week, with various aquatic plants and garden greens offered daily. As they live outdoors, they also take advantage of any insect foolish enough to grace the water's surface. But I wouldn't worry about your turtle. Try to get a fecal sample to the vet, if you can catch the turd before he eats it, but everything you describe sounds completely normal.

T.G.

 

[HLogic]

By the way, Map turtles are endemic to North America. I believe yours is a Ouachita Map Turtle (Graptemys ouachitensis).

 

[Tatergirl09]

Ironically I read this a few days ago and have come home to notice a beggar in my tank as well.... Maybe there is something in the weather