Help: sick / weak tortoise (no worms, parasite or RI)

Tom

The Dog Trainer
10 Year Member!
Platinum Tortoise Club
Joined
Jan 9, 2010
Messages
63,265
Location (City and/or State)
Southern California
So the damage has been done... I suppose soaks and such want to do any good, does it?

Daily soaks will help keep your tortoise hydrated while it is not eating and it will help to keep flushing the system.
 

Maitaimommy

Active Member
Joined
Jul 26, 2017
Messages
229
Location (City and/or State)
04005
Very good advice here Geng! Please try to stay positive. I understand your frustrations as I also love my tort and want the best for him:)
 

Shaif

Well-Known Member
Joined
Aug 26, 2016
Messages
438
Location (City and/or State)
Pittsburgh, PA
I'm sorry you are going through this. You obviously care so much for your tort. I'm crossing my fingers that all is ok! Wishing you and your baby a speedy recovery!
 

Geng

Member
5 Year Member
Joined
Jun 22, 2015
Messages
146
Daily soaks will help keep your tortoise hydrated while it is not eating and it will help to keep flushing the system.

I warm soaked her this morning before I went to work. She was drinking more the usual. She peed when I put her back. She also ate a little bit of hand fed dandelion. I put down some spring mix, and she crawled towards it. Sadly she just looked at it, and didn't take a bite from her food. She probably went to sleep in her hide again.

I hope these are good signs.

Very good advice here Geng! Please try to stay positive. I understand your frustrations as I also love my tort and want the best for him:)

I'm sorry you are going through this. You obviously care so much for your tort. I'm crossing my fingers that all is ok! Wishing you and your baby a speedy recovery!

Thanks a lot. The past few days I really feel awful because of the well being of my tortoise. I can't concentrate at work, I skipped my training session and in a bad mood, because I'm so stressed about my tortoise. Hopefully she will make a quick and nice recovery when I stop with baytril, and follow the advice I'm given.
 

TammyJ

Well-Known Member
5 Year Member
Joined
Jun 21, 2016
Messages
7,119
Location (City and/or State)
Jamaica
Hello and I have to just say I admire you for the time and care you are giving to your tortoise. The advice you have been given here, I totally agree with. Let us hope she will recover with all the effort you are putting in! Keep it up and all the very best!
 

Maitaimommy

Active Member
Joined
Jul 26, 2017
Messages
229
Location (City and/or State)
04005
Geng,
Sounds like she's headed in the right direction. Keep doing what you're doing:)
 

dubrov

New Member
Joined
Sep 16, 2019
Messages
1
Location (City and/or State)
Pennsylvania
Greg
She was drinking more the usual. She peed when I put her back.

Greg, as You're more experienced now - any idea was it RI and was it the antibiotics helping? Or was it rather something else?

Ours is experiencing same - she's quite passive now (about 3 years old, still eating on acceptable levels, gaining weight, her stool/pee looks completely normal by amount/content BUT) she used to noisily run around at least 2-3 hours a day, now the only "activeness" is when she's out for the food - then sleeping 23hours again. Her shell color is still nice/bright, BUT the under-shell color seems of more greenish shade than the healthy-yellow she used to have...

We used to keep two tortoises in same container, then this one started biting the other one too harsh (peeling pieces of skin on other one's legs to leave the bleeding spots), so we've separated them (keeping this one in the original container with original light/etc). She was active-runner before the separation but became idle-sleeper after. We even tried rejoining them for couple of days, but she is still passive. No signs of RI (except maybe rapider-than-usual breathing intensity, or might be just from being-too-tired).

Any advise? (I don't trust the vets we tried before, because our very-1st tortoise died from mis-diagnosis at early age which could've been prevented by just soaking her every day instead of once per 3 days - turned out she had clogged stool and just needed more hydration to fight it, but vets couldn't diagnose that even after the xray)
 

Maro2Bear

Well-Known Member
5 Year Member
Joined
May 29, 2014
Messages
14,712
Location (City and/or State)
Glenn Dale, Maryland, USA
Greg


Greg, as You're more experienced now - any idea was it RI and was it the antibiotics helping? Or was it rather something else?

Ours is experiencing same - she's quite passive now (about 3 years old, still eating on acceptable levels, gaining weight, her stool/pee looks completely normal by amount/content BUT) she used to noisily run around at least 2-3 hours a day, now the only "activeness" is when she's out for the food - then sleeping 23hours again. Her shell color is still nice/bright, BUT the under-shell color seems of more greenish shade than the healthy-yellow she used to have...

We used to keep two tortoises in same container, then this one started biting the other one too harsh (peeling pieces of skin on other one's legs to leave the bleeding spots), so we've separated them (keeping this one in the original container with original light/etc). She was active-runner before the separation but became idle-sleeper after. We even tried rejoining them for couple of days, but she is still passive. No signs of RI (except maybe rapider-than-usual breathing intensity, or might be just from being-too-tired).

Any advise? (I don't trust the vets we tried before, because our very-1st tortoise died from mis-diagnosis at early age which could've been prevented by just soaking her every day instead of once per 3 days - turned out she had clogged stool and just needed more hydration to fight it, but vets couldn't diagnose that even after the xray)


Dubrov. It’s probably best for you to start a new thread concerning issues with your tortoise. Everything will be different than the original poster. Where(howyou keep your tort, feeding, lights, indoor vs outdoor, lighting, etc. if your tort is outside, temps are changing as are sunrise/sunset, etc. Good that you separated, bullying is yet another problem...
 

Geng

Member
5 Year Member
Joined
Jun 22, 2015
Messages
146
Greg


Greg, as You're more experienced now - any idea was it RI and was it the antibiotics helping? Or was it rather something else?

Ours is experiencing same - she's quite passive now (about 3 years old, still eating on acceptable levels, gaining weight, her stool/pee looks completely normal by amount/content BUT) she used to noisily run around at least 2-3 hours a day, now the only "activeness" is when she's out for the food - then sleeping 23hours again. Her shell color is still nice/bright, BUT the under-shell color seems of more greenish shade than the healthy-yellow she used to have...

We used to keep two tortoises in same container, then this one started biting the other one too harsh (peeling pieces of skin on other one's legs to leave the bleeding spots), so we've separated them (keeping this one in the original container with original light/etc). She was active-runner before the separation but became idle-sleeper after. We even tried rejoining them for couple of days, but she is still passive. No signs of RI (except maybe rapider-than-usual breathing intensity, or might be just from being-too-tired).

Any advise? (I don't trust the vets we tried before, because our very-1st tortoise died from mis-diagnosis at early age which could've been prevented by just soaking her every day instead of once per 3 days - turned out she had clogged stool and just needed more hydration to fight it, but vets couldn't diagnose that even after the xray)

Hi Dubrov,

I think my tortoise wanted to hibernate back then. During my 2 weeks absent my parents would put out her lamps after 6 hours, would explain why he gotten less active. Ofcourse I didn't know that back then, so I took him to the vet. The anti-biotic only made it worse though. I followed the advise on this thread and started daily warm soaks in the morning, and hand feed her dandelions and spring mix (was a hard task). After keeping this up for like 2 months he starting bumping up.

As for you, maybe your tortoise is making a start with hibernation behaviour? It is the time of the year again and the weather has cooled down (at least here).
 
Top