- Joined
- Nov 4, 2013
- Messages
- 25
Hi,
I was wondering if anyone's come across the way of drinking our three-year-old RT seems to have started doing in the last few months. He used to favor the more traditional lower head or plunge head fully underwater technique, but instead has lately started opening his mouth wide and biting at the water, and then swallowing whatever is (or isn't) in his mouth. We're not really sure why he's started doing that, and it doesn't seem very efficient, or even safe really, as once he seemed to cough a bit and had to spit some out, like when it "goes down the wrong way" with kids.
He seems to be scared of water in general. He will never go in his actual water bowl, which is very shallow and not the death-trap large things you see pictures of sometimes, and is below the floor-line, so he doesn't have to climb into it. If we put him in manually, he'll stretch out his legs and really tense up, like he thinks he's about to sink right to the bottom of a lake, and once we let go, he'll try to leave it as soon as possible. Even floating food on the water won't encourage him to take a dip.
Because of that, we're worried about whether he's drinking enough. He gets a bath for 10-15 minutes every day anyway, in warm water up to the connecting point of his carapace, but even though he's doing the swallowing actions, it's difficult to know if anything much is really going down. He's always been doing normal toilet business when he's there, and urates expelled have always been creamy not gritty, but now for two days there's been no urination at all, even though it looks like he's straining and moving his tail around to get something out. All that comes out are bubbles.
In the meantime we've decided to feed him wetter food, dipping it in water before feeding it to him, and he got a tiny bit of cucumber today, although I know people have reservations about that. If he's become dehydrated, do people have any suggestions to try to get him to learn how to drink properly, or become less scared of water? To our knowledge he's never had any bad experiences with it. We've been aware of the need to not feed too many oxalate-containing foods, so how long should we let him go without toilet action before we should be worried?
Thanks if you can give any advice!
I was wondering if anyone's come across the way of drinking our three-year-old RT seems to have started doing in the last few months. He used to favor the more traditional lower head or plunge head fully underwater technique, but instead has lately started opening his mouth wide and biting at the water, and then swallowing whatever is (or isn't) in his mouth. We're not really sure why he's started doing that, and it doesn't seem very efficient, or even safe really, as once he seemed to cough a bit and had to spit some out, like when it "goes down the wrong way" with kids.
He seems to be scared of water in general. He will never go in his actual water bowl, which is very shallow and not the death-trap large things you see pictures of sometimes, and is below the floor-line, so he doesn't have to climb into it. If we put him in manually, he'll stretch out his legs and really tense up, like he thinks he's about to sink right to the bottom of a lake, and once we let go, he'll try to leave it as soon as possible. Even floating food on the water won't encourage him to take a dip.
Because of that, we're worried about whether he's drinking enough. He gets a bath for 10-15 minutes every day anyway, in warm water up to the connecting point of his carapace, but even though he's doing the swallowing actions, it's difficult to know if anything much is really going down. He's always been doing normal toilet business when he's there, and urates expelled have always been creamy not gritty, but now for two days there's been no urination at all, even though it looks like he's straining and moving his tail around to get something out. All that comes out are bubbles.
In the meantime we've decided to feed him wetter food, dipping it in water before feeding it to him, and he got a tiny bit of cucumber today, although I know people have reservations about that. If he's become dehydrated, do people have any suggestions to try to get him to learn how to drink properly, or become less scared of water? To our knowledge he's never had any bad experiences with it. We've been aware of the need to not feed too many oxalate-containing foods, so how long should we let him go without toilet action before we should be worried?
Thanks if you can give any advice!
. Poor thing!
