Is this stuff good for a baby res (algae)

[JT23]

i have like algae growing on my turt's shell. I do scrub it of with a toothbrush, but it's just annoying. I'm just wondering about if this stuff works, well the guy at the store recommended it to me... Btw it's called carapace preservative and it's supposed to help raise the luster and mend the slight scar (no idea what it means but idc)... It says to use it after a bath... It also mentions vitro parasites and pathogenic bacteria on the box.. So what do u think， should I use it?

 

[Yvonne G]

I wouldn't. Algae needs light and nutrients in order to grow. Are you keeping the turtle tank clean? I would just continue to clean the turtle with a brush and make sure the water is clean. It's not harmful to the turtle's shell.

 

[ZEROPILOT]

I agree with Yvonne. You'll be amazed how much less algae grows in super clean water.

 

[JT23]

Also the shell of the turt seams to be a little soft. I thought it was the algae. Should I buy like calcium blocks and stuff

 

[Yvonne G]

Yes, but I doubt he'll eat it. The best way to get calcium into a small turtle is to buy some pin-head crickets and gut load them:

"Gut Loading with Calcium
The food value of crickets can be dramatically enhanced when you feed them nutritious and vitamin-rich foods such as Calcium-Fortified Cricket Quencher or Fluker's High-Calcium Cricket Diet. Gut loading crickets with these products provides your reptile with much needed calcium and protein."

Or:

"Gut loading is the process of giving your live-food animals a diet intended to enrich them nutritionally. It's exactly what it sounds like: you load up the feeder animal's gut with something you want to give to the animal that will eat it. It a sense, you're basically using the feeder as a vehicle for the pet's supplements. It's not a technique you can only use with crickets: it works with any live food that eats, though it's less important when your food animals have more nutrient-rich bone and organ meat, like mice. And it's not something you'd only do for lizards, by any stretch.

When I've kept feeder crickets in the past, I used a vitamin-rich cricket gel (probably Fluker's, I think) as their main diet. These are pretty common, because crickets aren't hugely nutritious by themselves; if you're feeding your crickets a store-bought diet, check the label, because you might already be gut loading them. That's all gut loading comes down to: the crickets ate the gel, than the animals I fed them to benefit from the vitamins. With some animals I supplemented that by dusting the crickets with a calcium-rich powder right before feeding. That's not gut-loading, just another easy method of enhancing live food that can sometimes be helpful."