Urgent Care :: white patches, pits on shell--spreading!

[laurapa]

How big is your turtle? about 4in long
How long have you had it? one year

What is the water temperature? about 74 degrees (24 celcius)
Did you use a thermometer? yes
Are you using a water heater? no
How much water is in there? 5 gallons (10 gallon tank)
Are you using a water conditioner? just a dechlor--"chloro out"
Are you using any filtration? yes--active carbon filter

What is the basking temperature? between 83 and 85...but i have a feeling it gets colder at night
Is there a basking light? yes--a regular incandescent and a uva-uvb that i use 6 hours a day (it is old...i need to change it i think)
Is there a basking platform that is easy to climb on? yes--completely dry
What kind is it or what is it made out of? foam that looks like a rock
Is there a UVB light? yes, but it's old and i just found out they go bad

What have you been trying to feed it? normal--reptomin pellets and red lettuce and sometimes carrot
When was the last time your turtle ate? today, and his appetite was fine

How big is the tank/pond/enclosure? just 10 gallons (too small i know)
Is the tank near a window? no, but it is in a room with a sliding glass door
Is the tank in a room with a lot of activity? yes

Have you read the Basic Care section? yes
Have you searched the forums for similar situations? yes

Is there any other unusual activity/symptoms? yes.

OK, here's the situation. I thought my turtle was just starting to shed. He was getting little golden patches in his scutes. I realized the other day that those patches stay visible when he basks completely dry, AND I realized that they are more white than gold. Now he has little lesions on his shell (not pussing or oozing or anything). It looks like, instead of shedding, his scutes are eroding away. I am afraid that the whitish patches are bone. They are hard, like his shell, and spreading I think. The condition seems to be spreading.

Today I noticed for the first time what I'm pretty certain is a fungus on his neck. He stuck his neck out and there was a white fluffy substance where the fold had been.

His shell has never looked good since we got him, but it is far worse now. His previous owners only fed him reptomin pellets and didn't provide a uv light. We started feeding him red lettuce and some occasional carrot along with the reptomin pellets. We have introduced a uva-uvb light and calcium bone. He doesn't take much interest in the calcium bone, but we are trying again.

His living conditions are not ideal. He eats well (I think) and has good lighting (exept this uvb bulb is getting old) but his tank is too small and we cannot keep the pH of his water below 7.8 despite adding liquid pH decrease (it could be even higher than that--the test strip only goes that far). But he can dry off completely when he basks and seems to be warm enough.

We put sand in his tank in place of rocks, and the sand did a fabulous job of filtering the tank but I think it was abrasive to his shell. The last time we cleaned his tank we eliminated substrate altogether. I am worried that the sand abraded his shell or got impacted and gave him an infection.

I'm sorry I can't provide pictures. I don't have a digital camera. From my description, does anybody know what he might be dealing with? I'm worried now that he has the fungus-looking substance on his neck, and he is basking an extra amount today. He just got back from being turtle-sat for a week, but he was looking bad beforehand. I wonder if it was colder in their house and his condition worsened a little because of that.

That's all the information I can possibly think of. I think we'll schedule a vet visit, but it would be great if somebody could help me think about this in the meantime.

[SpotsMama]

There are lots of things that can cause white on a turtle's shell. Some are normal and some are infections. Why don't you do a search on the keywords white and shell. Under the keyword selection say "search for all terms". Look in Urgent Care and General Care. Lots of these posts have photos in them. See if you can find a photo of a shell that looks like yours and show it to us.

How much does your turtle bask?

[laurapa]

Thanks for the search hints. The way I was trying to look through the forum was taking forever.

My turtle's shell is kind of a combination between the pictures on these two post threads:
http://www.redearslider.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=11097&highlight=white+shell
Here, his shell is pitted like this turtle, but the white spots correspond more with the scutes and don't appear so random.

and here:

http://www.redearslider.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=8086&highlight=shell+rot
This is kind of what the white on his shell looks like. The only difference I can see is that when I am looking at him up close, sometimes the white patches look indented, like the scute has worn away.

I've never tried to post links on here, so hopefully these work.

I remembered one other thing--my turtle's skin has shed constantly since I got him, and it has always worried me.

[laurapa]

My turtle basks for hours every day, off and on. Not sure exactly how many hours. But I bet he spends about half of his time in the water and half of his time on the rock. He mostly sleeps underwater.

[Cramer]

I don't have a better picture on hand, but does the white pits and peeling look like this turtles shell? And when she jumps back into the water are the spots gold?


This turtle is shedding her scutes right now, which is perfectly normal. She's never had her scutes come off in big pieces like her tank mate, so it looks terrible right now. Enough to scare me if I didn't know better.

[marisa]

From your description, it sounds like your turtle needs a better set-up (including a new UVB light). None of those white areas has scutes that are shedding? The vet will most likely prescribe something to help the shell, but your turtle also should have some of those habitat issues addressed (bigger tank, UVB light, etc.).

Constant skin shedding could be a number of things, including over feeding (and fast growth), too high temps, a too high ammonia level (inadequate filtration) or even a fungus.

[laurapa]

I think my turtle's shell looks a little creepier than the picture you posted. Last time he shed his scutes it was all pretty straightforward. There were little air bubbles but I could tell that's what they were.

Some of those scutes ARE shedding. Some of them do have bubbles under them.

The thing that is alarming is that in some cases the white parts are indented. Like the scutes have been eroded down. I don't like it. On his side (I don't know the technical terms) a scute has come off halfway and what it revealed was white. Bone??

We bought an ammonia detector and the levels have been fine. We put in extra dechlor because the water here is extra full of chloramine and I read that excess chlorine can cause excessive shedding. It seems like I feed him the right amount of food, at least based on what I read here. His water is pretty consistently 75. I do often wonder if it's a fungus because the pH of his water is so high. We'll try a new brand of pH decrease and see if it helps.

He was basking a lot today and refusing to come down and say hi like he normally does. He yawned a few times up there, which is also unusual for him, and I know that can be a bad sign. When he got into the water he was moving slowly and then eventually perked up. I hope he's OK.

Sorry for the extra long posts! We've got to get him to a vet!

[SpotsMama]

I think a vet is in order. Depending on what the vet thinks, treatment with silver sulfadiazine (SSD cream or Sulfadyne) might be best, combined with lots of dry docking.

The turtles in the examples you found do appear to have shell infections. The white you see under the scute that are shed may or may not be bone. A vet would be best able to determine whether it's really bone or something else like fugus in the lower levels of shell. Where the shell seems indented could be where a fungal or bacterial infection has eaten away at the surface layers, but again a vet who knows what he/she is doing and can see the actual turtle will be best able to figure it out.

Good luck. I'd be very interested in hearing what the vet has to say and what treatment is prescribed.

Here's a standard caution for anyone who's taking their turtle to see a vet. If the vet offers to give a vitamin A shot, first make sure the vet is positive your turtle really needs vitamin A and then discuss other alternatives to shots with the vet like eye drops with vitamin A, cod liver oil or food supplements. Several turtles have recently had very bad reactions to vitamin A shots and I think it's best that if vitamin A is needed (and often it's not) the safer methods be used instead.

[steve]

Fungal/yeast infections are common for captive turtles...

Some more pics here: http://www.redearslider.com/forum/searc ... de=results