General Care Discussion :: Shell shedding and eating Turtle Dock

[michstarr]

I have 2 things:
1 - Rock is a 5 year old female - and in the past year has seemed to be shedding her shell more than normal (probably not proper terminology!). I don't know if it's just she's bigger and the filter used to absorb it and now can't - or if there's something wrong.

2 - Rock has started to eat her basking platform. I don't know if she swallows it as I find lots of debris in the water that I have to clean, but she's made a good dent. It's one of those Zoo Med trutle docks. Rock was at a pet store for 6 weeks this summer where they fed her fish all the time - now she's back to pellets and some veggies. Could she be missing the fish and wants to eat something else?

A little worried.

[Ashley]

Here are some topics about the dock eating:

viewtopic.php?f=5&t=27517

viewtopic.php?f=4&t=27822

viewtopic.php?f=6&t=27700

[Ranger The Red Ear Slider]

The dock eating won't harm your turtle mine use to eat allot of it and never harmed him.

[AllTheCandies]

why do turtles eat their docks so often?

[steve]

Some will just try to eat anything. My RES chipped his beak by constantly biting a resin-made platform and chewed up a third of his cork basking area.

[Ranger The Red Ear Slider]

I think mine does it for fun, He never really ate the dock just chewed and spit out the bits of foam.

[slabv]

My turtles do the same thing. I have one of those zoo med floating docks, and my RES often nib on the underside of it. I think one of the reason is because food (pallets) will drift close of the edges of the dock, so over time, the RES associate dock with food source and nib at it. All Zoo med products are non-toxic, so most likely it will pass through turtle's system with no problem~

[Joel]

I have the same problem, i bought a large turtle dock by zoomed where it said suited for all size aquatic turtles, and then Lola gets on it and it completely sank! so i put a block of polystyrene underneath it now everyone can get on without it sinking, but when she gets irritated she bites and rips pieces off to float around the tank..

[sagoy]

Luffy and Ninja bites and chews on anything in the tank, rocks, toys, cuttlebone, bridge, plastic plants... yeah..

[steve]

If you have a particularly bitey and destructive RES, I would go for some cork bark. It's 100% natural stuff.