Is this what urine looks like?

[graciemay98]

I've had my baby sully for a bit over a month and he poops regularly, but i've never seen this appear until the last couple days.

Is this just his 'urine'? or affects of a common problem?

thanks! (also sorry if this is a dumb question)

•Photos attached: the white powdery stuff in his water dish•

 

[JoesMum]

It's urate. How your tort gets rid of excess proteins. Passing urate is normal.

Passing urate that looks like that isn't normal. It should be like mucus not grit. Your tort is dehydrated.

You need to soak this tort for at least 30 minutes twice a day for the next week or so and then drop it to once a day.

Is water freely available in your tort's enclosure? Can we look over photos to see if there are any tweaks we would recommend

 

[graciemay98]

It's urate. How your tort gets rid of excess proteins. Passing urate is normal.

Passing urate that looks like that isn't normal. It should be like mucus not grit. Your tort is dehydrated.

You need to soak this tort for at least 30 minutes twice a day for the next week or so and then drop it to once a day.

Is water freely available in your tort's enclosure? Can we look over photos to see if there are any tweaks we would recommend

Thank you for the reply! So we always soak him once a day for 30 mins but we will start doing the routine you recommended! And yes his water bowl is always available as shown in the photo.

It is an open enclosure so the humidity is low.. we are working out options to modify his enclosure to have a top though. Until then we regularly turn our bathroom into a steam room and sit him in there while he soaks, we also have a humidifier near by his enclosure that runs almost all the time, and we mist his enclosure daily.

I know humidity is a huge deal but we haven't had him very long and like i said we're trying to work out a functioning and safe closed habitat!

 

[Tim Carlisle]

Fine grade orchid bark would help retain a lot of the humidity in your enclosure once you find a way to cover it. Just get the orchid bark good and soaked and put it in your enclosure. It's mold/mildew resistant, so little worry there.