Intro to Nessie

NessiesNoob

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Greetings from a new member, long time Herp Hobbiest and new Sulcata caretaker.

Ever since I was about 5 or 6 years old I have had a deep interest and fascination in turtles and reptiles in general (so for about 4 decades now). By and large, turtles I have kept have been locally native species. Part of this when I was younger was because I would go out hunting for turtles at the local ponds and lakes, keep them a short time and then return them (Mom made me). As I grew older, I continued to keep local species because they were the most sure-fire species to accommodate with humidity, temperature, seasonal variances, habitat re-creation and other things. It also meant that if a turtle got 'too large' or if life forced me to reduce numbers and I couldn't find someone to adopt the turtles, I could find safe places to release them (I know this is frowned upon by some and I know the concerns, but for the sake of an introduction, I would prefer to avoid getting into this matter right now).

In the past I have cared for Yellow-Bellies, Red-Ears, Chickens, Common Snappers, Smooth Softshells, Spiny Softshells, Maps, Painteds, Musks and Muds. The closest I have come to keeping tortoises have been 2 Eastern Box Turtles and 1 Ornate Box Turtle. I have had indoor and outdoor enclosures.

A little over a decade ago, I gave up my passion for a time when my kids were born. Priorities meant changing where our income went and even though I kept my turtles secure and their enclosures clean, I didn't want to run the risk of accidental salmonella contamination.

Now to 'introduce' my wife. For the longest time, she has had fascination not so much with turtles -though she does like them- but more she loves tortoises. Since moving to Florida 8 years ago, she has been pushing me to acquiring a tortoise and recently I gave in and we got her a young -not quite hatchling, but close- sulcata. I actually tried to convince her into getting a redfoot since they would be more amendable to our climate, but thanks to a few youtube videos from Kamp Kenan (jerk! :), she insisted on a sulcata. For the purpose of naming, I have guessed the sex of the tortoise as female, judging from the plastron and the position of the cloaca, but I told her that at any point over the next five to six years we could learn that I am very much wrong. She chose Nessie since nobody knows what sex it is (or if it even exists!). Since Nessie is the first true tortoise I have cared for and an exotic as well, I will probably be dropping in from time to time to ask a few questions or to verify some of my decisions regarding her care.

nessie.jpg

Currently I have her on an adjusted daily feeding schedule. I have read different suggestions on feeding ranging from feeding daily to every other day to even once a week due to the sulcata's slow digestion. The diet I have her on is every other day she will get a healthy helping of greens. The breeder I got her from suggested using the Spring Mix salad bags from the grocery store, but I don't strictly use this. I tend to use a mix of the Spring Mix, a pinch of grass clippings from my yard (I do no spray or fertilize) and a few different safe foliage greens from my garden (coreopsis, wormwood and beebalm). I give her about 30 minutes from the time she starts eating to get her fill and then I discard what she doesn't eat. I have planted some hibiscus for her, but need to wait for the fertilizers and pesticides used by the grower to leave theirs systems before I start feeding her this. On the days between the greens she gets a small 'treat' of some sort. Today was a carrot that was moistened and then dipped into crushed eggshell (seen above). On other days I might give her rose petals, coreopsis flowers or something else 'colorful' (and safe). I try not to feed her the colored stuff with the greens as I noticed the first and only time I did this, she stampeded over the greens to get to the carrot and made a real mess of things.

tortable.jpg

Her current home is a dresser-top wooden enclosure (above). It is 15 inches deep, almost 5 feet wide and 12 inches tall. I am not happy with the current light setup and I have ordered a new hood from my local pet shop to match the one on the right. The lights in the hood and the bell-housing on the left are both UVB and center 'light' is a ceramic heating element. When the new hood comes in, I will place it on the left side to replace that bell and I will then put in a UVA bulb into that one and have it over near the left corner and I will similarly move the ceramic element to the right corner. The UVA bulb will be on a timer with the UVB bulbs while the ceramic stays on through the night. I also tend to place stones under the heat sources to provide that residual ground heat that some tortoises like (I know my boxies loved this). I need to get two more thermometers so I don't have to keep moving the one seen above to monitor each section. So far the area under the ceramic element can get up to about 105F in the late afternoon. The right side tends to stay around 85F and the left side will dip into the 70's at night. Nessie tends to avoid the left side either due to the lower temp or lower light... or both.

I would have made all four walls solid to reduce stress (I have seen tortoises and turtles 'pace' along glass walls trying to get to the points beyond the glass), but this is next to my wife's desk and she wanted a way to observe Nessie while doing her work. Maybe it's because the enclosure is built up to the front edge of the dresser, but Nessie might walk up to the windows, but she doesn't pace them or try to go through.

Something I carried over from a table I had built for my Box Turtles a couple decades ago is using nested trays sunken into the substrate. For my Box Turtles I would sow the trays with grass and dandelion seeds. When they would devour all plant matter, I could lift out the top tray, leaving the bottom one in and replace it with another planted tray. My boxies enjoyed this setup so much that they rewarded me with a clutch of eggs buried in the grass tray. For Nessie, I have not started planting anything in the trays, but use them to provide different substrates. While the main substrate for the enclosure is timothy grass hay, the tray on the right is filled with soil and bark mulch to give her something to dig into. The tray in the center (that you can't see due to the divider) is filled with sphagnum moss and I dampen this one from time to time to give her an area with slightly higher humidity if she so chooses it. I also feed her over this tray as if she accidentally ingests the moss while feeding (hasn't happened yet), it should pass through her without harm. I am actually hesitant to provide a planted one as I do not know if this would cause her to over-eat.

As 'nice' as the enclosure is for her at this size (I am actually not satisfied with the construction), I am fully aware that it will not last. Next month I will be building another enclosure that is roughly the same length as this one, but more than double the depth. I plan to model it off of Chicken Tractors with wheels at one end for easy movement and this new pen will be placed outside. We do not currently live where we can set up a permanent outdoor pen, but we fully expect to move a bit further south in a couple years with plenty of room to build a pen suitable for an adult sulcata. In the meantime, this portable tortoise tractor should suffice to give her some outdoor time and actual sunlight on the days that I am working in the yard/garden.

So there you have it. A bit long winded perhaps, but I don't think I missed anything. If there are any suggestions regarding the lighting or feeding, please feel free to speak up. Again, this is my first true tortoise and while they might be very much related to the turtles I have kept in the past, the care is a little different and I am sure I will make minor errors along the way.

TL;DR

New member here. Hi.
 

wellington

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Hello and Welcome. You need to feed every day not just spring mix which I see you are adding more things. That's good just do it every day. She needs to be soaked every day for 20-30 minutes in warm water. She needs a humidity of 80% and temps no lower then 80 day or night. She is already pyramided and with the advice given to you by the breeder, I can tell they aren't up on the most updated info. Follow the caresheets this forum has and all the other sticky threads under the sulcata section.
 

NessiesNoob

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So adding a third tray with seeded grass might not be such a bad thing? Not in lieu of daily feeding, but just to provide grazing opportunities between daily feedings.
 

Bee62

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Hello and welcome.
A sulcata tortoise needs to eat every day and the whole day long.
You place the food in the morning in the enclosure and remove what your tort has not eaten in the evening when she sleeps.
Sulcatas are gras and weed eaters. Carrots are too high in sugar and sugar is bad for the bacterias in the intestine. You can feed lambs lettuce, belgium endive and romaine lettuce in combination with gras, leafs, weeds and blossoms.

Sulcatas are not slow in digesting food . They only need temps never below 80 - 85 F night and day and a basking spot of 100 F.
70 F at night is way too cold for your sulcata baby.
She will need high humidity and daily soaks as @wellington said to stop the pyramiding and for a good hydration and health.

Lights for a tortoise should come from above, never from the side.
It will be better for the eyes of your tort to move the lamp that the light shines from above.

Good luck with Nessie. It is easy to have a healthy growing sulcata when you do 4 things: The right warmth, the right humidity, daily soaks and the right food.
 

Maro2Bear

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Greetings and welcome...

The Sully care sheets, as noted above, provide a ton of current up-to-date tried and true info on sully care and feeding. You will want to soak daily, feed daily, introduce lots of food types, including mazuri and cuttlebone.

As far as this comment, The right side tends to stay around 85F and the left side will dip into the 70's at night. Nessie tends to avoid the left side either due to the lower temp or lower light... or both.
  • You definitely want to bump those temperatures up - the overall minimum temperature for entire enclosure should be 80F. You never want it dropping down.
Good luck, feed more...these Sully’s love to eat.....and I’ve never heard of “slow digestion” associated with sulcatas. Maybe if kept too cold, yes, but at proper heat levels, I don’t think so.

Keep up with the postings and updates.
 

NessiesNoob

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That's the problem with the internet. So many 'experts' giving advice on a topic with some giving bad info. One of the reasons why I wanted to join a forum, at least here if I do get some bad info, someone will be quick to correct it.

I will definitely up the feeding and will also definitely repeat the old grass/dandelion tray that I used to use for my box turtles. That way she should always have something to graze on. I had read that carrots were not good for constant consumption, but that once or twice a week should be fine. Same goes for the rose petals. Not that there's a whole lot of nutritional info on coreopsis petals, but the little bit I have found suggests they are low on nutrition. My yard is a rather organic/no chems landscape/garden. Not that I am a hard advocate for "going Organic", but if I can do something simple and free like making my own compost or keeping a worm farm, then why not? Most of the things that I grow are native to Florida's low nutrient, sandy soil and are naturally grazed upon by the local Gopher Tortoises (I have three that visit my yard from time to time for a little gnoshing). For the most part I am not worried about anything being poisonous to a tortoise, but I will not feed Nessie anything without first verifying if it is on a 'safe' list. When she ends up going outside to roam and graze in the tractor enclosure, I will be sure to check if anything is outright dangerous for her, but in my experience, most turtles are pretty good at avoiding plants they don't like or shouldn't have. They're smarter than we humans in that regard.

I will also rethink my heating a little. We tend to keep our house at around 78-82F with the night time thermostat set to 76F. If I go the the UVA on the left and ceramic heater on the right, the right side of the pen will stay warm, but it's likely the left side will cool off during the night and probably getting down to around that 76F mark by early morning. Reptiles are pretty good at moderating their temperatures, but if 76 is too cool for a young sulcata, then I will make what adjustments I need to so that the temp is higher. In that regards: Decades ago, the 'suggested light' was simply UV bulbs. Shortly before I got out of the hobby, experts were pushing for making sure that turtles got both UVA and UVB exposure. Is this still the case? Naturally, when she goes outside this isn't something I will have to worry about, but I have it in my head that I need to provide a UVA heat bulb to go along with the UVB's that seem so easy to find in comparison. As for the side lighting... that is one of the things I don't like about the current set up. Health benefits aside (which I didn't know), I just always felt that a top-down full illumination looks more natural.

Thanks all.
 

Yvonne G

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Hi, and welcome!

I leave the food in the enclosure until the next day, when I remove it to add fresh. They come out and eat throughout the day. . . doesn't matter that by the end of the day it's dry and crispy - they still eat it. Young sulcatas really don't eat much grass or hay, but if you can get Nessie to eat grass, that's great. Change your substrate to something you can keep moist, and get the humidity up to about 80% and it's all good!
 

TechnoCheese

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Pearly

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Howdy from Texas! I am raising the Redfooted (forest species) also just a hobby keeper. This forum is THE BEST place to learn about torts, and making many new friends in the process:) enjoy your little cute Nessie and have fun on this Forum. Great to have you[emoji217]
 

NessiesNoob

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And now Speedy.
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Ever since getting Nessie, my wife has been ribbing me to get a second Sulcata and I kept saying "No". It didn't help that my son said he wanted one to call his own. Then last weekend we caught the recent Kamp Kenan video where he suggests getting two so the tortoises show all natural inclinations that might not be seen if only one is kept and my wife says, "See?" (I am really beginning to hate that guy [Not really]) Then in a fortunate (unfortunate?) encounter, we went to our favorite local pet shop (not a big box store) to get some supplies. As we were checking out, we saw Speedy here. We learned that she was a rescue/return and the victim of neglect and poor conditions. For the past year or so she has had no kind of UV light. The pyramiding is a bit more pronounced and there is a slight deformity at the back of her carapace. She is about 50% larger than Nessie. Proper husbandry would say "isolate to minimize the chance of disease". But both came from the same original breeder and the shop had her checked for any other concerns other than the deformities. So she currently resides with Nessie and I am watching for any signs of aggression. So far nothing. Speedy seems content to dig herself into the substrate under the UVA light while Nessie checks her out and then heads back to her hideaway or to the food dish. She did not really cost us anything. Well, not enitely true. We were required to pick up a 20 long tank and necessary UV lights, but since our turtle table already has 2 UVB lights and a UVA heat lamp, we only had to get the tank which we will probably use for other purposes (a new Crested Gecko home maybe?)

Here's an updated photo of the tortoise table with all the lights in place. The fixtures from left to right are: UVA, UVB, UVB, Ceramic heater. All are secured in place so they don't topple or slide when the top is opened (the first UVA didn't last 24 hours due to a feeding mishap that toppled that fixture). I keep track of the thermometers and usually turn the heater off around mid day when the center thermometer reads 88-90F and the side ones read 105+. I really need to get an automatic thermostat to do this for me. The inside is about to be remodeled a bit to provide more hideaways as Speedy is just big enough that if she decides to dig into Nessie's, Nessie would not be able to get out. Now that our weather is consistantly in the 80's during the day, I will be taking them outside to graze on grass soon. I just want Speedy to feel comfortable in her new surroundings first.
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NessiesNoob

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Amending a mistake from my first post. I had said that "the breeder" had told me to use the Spring Mix. I have now learned that he is not the breeder, but knows and gets his stock from the same breeder each year. This guy, the one who advised me, has a lot of knowledge of a lot of things, but in this case was relaying what the breeder had told him. And while he knew that sullied could be fed other things, generally tells new keepers to use the Spring Mix as well as a pelletized diet because it's the easiest for the general public to acquire. That said, and I witnessed this today, he tries to get a feel for everyone that comes to his shop and if he feels they will not take care of one of his animals, he will refuse sale. The person he was dealing with got quite indignant and said what they did with their pet (a bird in this case) was their business and so they walked out without a bird.
 
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