Shell health and other queries

Roo

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Joined
May 28, 2014
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11
Location (City and/or State)
Cambridge, UK
It's been a while since I last posted, Elijah is now 3 years and 6 months old! He's been steadily growing at what I have to assume is a healthy rate and he's gone from being barely the size of my palm at 9 months to now hanging off the edge of my fingers when i hold him in one flat hand. He's pretty much doubled in size!
It recently occurred to me that i should be looking into a larger table to house him as he's had the same one since I first brought him home and compared to to mansion it was when he first moved in, it must seem like a cramped studio flat these days. Are there guidelines to how the size of the tort should correlate with the size of the enclosure/table?

Every so often I give him a once over and come up with minor concerns, in particular regarding the shape of his shell and whether or not he's growing normally. I've always been terrified of the dreaded pyramiding but so far, although he's not completely smooth, i don't think he's fallen into that trap.

He does however, have a shell that seems to flare slightly at the edges - so that when i look down on him directly from above he seems to have more of a rectangle shape; the four corners being the flared edges.
Is this normal? And if not then what might I be doing wrong that's causing it?

He eats a pretty varied diet of watercress, garden weeds, campanula, the occasional dandelion, tomato or piece of broc, all sprinkled with calcium dust, he has water available constantly and I soak him a couple of times a week.

He's not normally chilling out on bright red linen and I probably went mad taking photos, but hopefully you can see what I mean in the ones where there's a birds eye view of his shell.
I've uploaded all of these just incase there is anything else i should be concerned about that, as i'm not an expert, I haven't spotted.

Any comments much appreciated!


Elih1.jpg Elih2.jpg Elih3.jpg Elih4.jpg Elih5.jpg Elih6.jpg Elih7.jpg Elih8.jpg
 

wellington

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Wow that's the lightest Russian I have ever seen. Very pretty. The minimum for an adult Russian is 4x8. In the wild, although fairly small species, they travel great distances.
 

Yvonne G

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He really looks nice. You're doing a great job with him.
 

sir prince

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Aug 10, 2016
Messages
36
Wow practically my tortoise's twin. I also have been curious as to his shape. Seems were doing something right good luck!
 

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