Setting up hatchling habitat

andreabb1

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Hello all, my in-laws gave me eight baby box turtles this fall and I'm trying to set up a nice habitat for them. This site says that red wigglers are good, but I read somewhere else that they can poison your turtle. One site says that mercury vapor bulbs are great, but this one says that they can overheat/dry a turtle. I already bought a mercury vapor bulb for $40 so I hate to not use it. The red wigglers I got are from a pet store--maybe red wigglers can be bad if they're not raised to be food? I ordered a five foot long horse bunk feeder to house my turtles and would really like to grow plants for them to hide near and eventually eat. In your experience, what plants grow easiest in an indoor set up? Will plants grow in eco earth (it's shredded coconut husks) or do I need to use topsoil? I read that spaghnum moss is good too for retaining moisture--do I use that in conjunction with eco earth, or just one or the other? Also, is it possible to raise mealworms in my habitat or will the adult beetles start to overrun the habitat? Thanks so much for your help!
 

Gillian M

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Hello @andreabb1 and a very warm welcome to the forum! :)

Please read the "Beginners Mistakes" Thread and the care sheet. There is also a section on enclosures that will definitely help you. ;)

You are going to have to get used to reading conflicting info. Don't allow it to confuse/irritate you.

Any pics of your torts? :tort:
 

Yvonne G

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The main thing to remember is that because of their tiny size, baby box turtles dehydrate very easily (and quickly). So they must be kept in a very moist environment. It helps to diffuse the strong light (no need to not use your $40 bulb) by placing quite a few plants in the habitat. This also serves to give them plenty of hiding places, which makes them feel more secure.

If you buy red worms from a bait store, you really should set them up in clean soil, potting soil is ok, for about a week to clean them out before you feed them to the babies. A meal worm every now and then is ok, but the hard outer shell (exoskeleton) is hard to digest, so they should be used infrequently.

I push some moistened sphagnum moss into the hiding place for them to burrow into. Plants will grow in the eco earth. It's a good idea to buy about twice as many as you want and rotate them as they either get trampled or start to die off.
 

andreabb1

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Thanks for your welcome and replies. The thing is, two of my turtles tried eating the red wigglers I got, but after they grabbed one, they both dropped them from their mouths pretty immediately. That's when I did a bit of research and saw that some people said they could be poisonous. But like I said, I got them from the pet store, so they should be totally edible and delicious. Since I got my turtles (my in-laws started giving them to be in september, I think I got the last ones in the middle of October), I've had absolutely zero luck in getting them to eat anything other than mealworms. I've offered melon, cheese, chicken, lettuce, the aforementioned red wigglers, and more types of pet store turtle food pellets than I care to think about, and no interest whatsoever. How much does a hatchling need to eat per week? It's hard for me to tell most of them apart, but my guess is that the little ones eat maybe one worm per week? Does that sound like dangerously little food? The turtle in my profile pic that's not in the dish is quite a bit bigger and she'll put away like ten-fifteen mealworms per week. Any suggestions for a wiggly, easy to digest food other than red wigglers?
 

Eric Phillips

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Hello and welcome! There is 2 main species of red worms that can be found in bait stores. The first one is Eisenia Fetida "Red Wiggler" and the other is Eisenia Hortensis "European Nightcrawler". The Fetida is known to secrete a yellow substance that is poisonous to certain snakes and also is known to not be palatable. Whether, this is the case for box turtles its hard to say. Unlike the Fetida, the Hortensis doesn't seem to have these issues even though they are known to be a compost worm too. They are the ones I feed my Box Turtles and I've never had any issues with them.
 

KevinGG

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Thanks for your welcome and replies. The thing is, two of my turtles tried eating the red wigglers I got, but after they grabbed one, they both dropped them from their mouths pretty immediately. That's when I did a bit of research and saw that some people said they could be poisonous. But like I said, I got them from the pet store, so they should be totally edible and delicious. Since I got my turtles (my in-laws started giving them to be in september, I think I got the last ones in the middle of October), I've had absolutely zero luck in getting them to eat anything other than mealworms. I've offered melon, cheese, chicken, lettuce, the aforementioned red wigglers, and more types of pet store turtle food pellets than I care to think about, and no interest whatsoever. How much does a hatchling need to eat per week? It's hard for me to tell most of them apart, but my guess is that the little ones eat maybe one worm per week? Does that sound like dangerously little food? The turtle in my profile pic that's not in the dish is quite a bit bigger and she'll put away like ten-fifteen mealworms per week. Any suggestions for a wiggly, easy to digest food other than red wigglers?

Baby turtles should be fed everyday. The worms may be too big. Try using smaller earthworms. Cheese should never be offered. Please look at this hatchling care sheet for proper diet and enclosure:

http://www.tortoiseforum.org/threads/box-turtle-hatchling-care-sheet.97144/
 

Yvonne G

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Thanks for your welcome and replies. The thing is, two of my turtles tried eating the red wigglers I got, but after they grabbed one, they both dropped them from their mouths pretty immediately. That's when I did a bit of research and saw that some people said they could be poisonous. But like I said, I got them from the pet store, so they should be totally edible and delicious. Since I got my turtles (my in-laws started giving them to be in september, I think I got the last ones in the middle of October), I've had absolutely zero luck in getting them to eat anything other than mealworms. I've offered melon, cheese, chicken, lettuce, the aforementioned red wigglers, and more types of pet store turtle food pellets than I care to think about, and no interest whatsoever. How much does a hatchling need to eat per week? It's hard for me to tell most of them apart, but my guess is that the little ones eat maybe one worm per week? Does that sound like dangerously little food? The turtle in my profile pic that's not in the dish is quite a bit bigger and she'll put away like ten-fifteen mealworms per week. Any suggestions for a wiggly, easy to digest food other than red wigglers?

If you clean the worms out (put them in a tub of clean soil for a week or so with kitchen veggie scraps, they'll taste better to the babies. Red worms that are raised for bait smell pretty pungent, so I imagine they taste pretty bad too.

I have a little plastic drum that I cut in half and added horse manure, leaves and dirt. I didn't add any worms until the horse manure had decomposed. Then I mixed it all up, added several containers of worms with a layer of leaves on top. I feed my baby box turtles from this worm bin and the worms are well accepted.

worm bin b.jpg worm bin.jpg
 

VTA Cat

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Got wonderful advice on my post, S.O.H save our hatchling. Hatched 11/5 and lives in moistened peat and coconut fiber. Her substrate stays moist...we mist twice a day. She stays buried except to eat. LOVES pill bugs! She's so tiny. We soak her, let her get warm...no warmth no eat. Then she gets her pill bugs. I crush part so they can't run away. Her hide is in the corner semi covered by sphagnum moss (holds water for humidity) and she hides in it. She didn't eat for almost 5 weeks but we still made sure she got to soak in very shallow water. She was the size of a quarter when we found her new hatched.
 
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