Posted: Sat Oct 05, 2019 11:37 am Re: Turtle Injured Eye
Hi Steve,
Jessie again. I am VERY worried about Angelo. Shortly after I messaged you, I got in contact with a vet in the area that accepts exotic animals. He’s not a “herp vet” in particular, but probably has some limited knowledge about turtles.
Angelo’s other eye started swelling closed, so then I really got concerned and took him to see the vet last Tuesday. I asked my husband to get him out of the tank and put him in a clean box because I was barely going to get him to the appointment on time. Angelo has been laying on the bottom of his tank inside of his shell. Not swimming at all, or eating. Both eyes swollen and now I can really tell that he’s ill. He’s acting ill. Strangely, when my husband took him out to get him ready for me, he was out of the tank for 30 minutes and the swelling in his eyes went down and his eyes were open! He was trying to run around all over the place! So when I get him to the vet, he looks like a healthy little turtle; really active! You can tell that his eyes weren’t up to par, but he had them open and was all over the place at the vet’s office! He tells me it’s a Vitamin A deficiency and I need to change his diet; start giving him fresh salmon once a week, egg yolks once a week, chicken liver, mustard greens and he can still have his worm and shrimp and pellets; just need more variation. He gave me some antibiotic ointment for his eyes, and that was it. I was relieved and stop at the grocery store on my way home to get the food items he mentioned.
As soon as I got home and placed Angelo back in his tank, boom! Eyes swelled, closed up and worse, he doesn’t swim! It’s like his body was paralyzed in the water! His arms and legs were out and he just sinks to the bottom of his tank! Totally freaked me out! He goes inside of his shell and just stays there like he can’t move! My husband is convinced there is something in the water, but his water is really clean!
Like I mentioned before, Angelo had shell rot from poor husbandry when I got him. He was in a 30 gallon tank, and that’s all I had to keep him in when I got him. There was literally nothing in the tank but water. No gravel or substrate (which is probably fine, but seems so boring for the turtle), and he had a Zoo Med canister turtle filter. The light was a clip light (cheap aluminum) with a blue bulb (probably incandescent but no heat!!), and one of those turtle docks that suction to the side of the tank. (I got him from my brother, and I’m sure he took the advice provided by the pet store he got him from.) My brother told me that he ate a pinch of Reptomin sticks and worms twice a week; nothing else. I felt so sorry for the turtle as it just seemed cruel leaving him in this glass enclosure. What a boring life! Right away, I could tell that this filter was not strong enough. I was scooping poop off the bottom every day. So I just went to town; bought new gravel, fluorite for live plants, got the Penn Plax turtle topper so he could get out of the water to completely dry, got a double sided lamp with infrared heat for night and mercury vapor for day, got some live plants acceptable for turtles and a high power Penn Plax Cascade 1500 canister filter. What a difference! That filter was kicking butt in that little tank! Never once saw any poop on the bottom of the tank, or debris or anything! I just kept adding more water when it evaporated. Angelo loves his plants so much that he ate ALL of them! Even the ones that were supposed to taste bad to turtles like java fern, moneywort, and I had a whole bunch of hornwort! I got floating lettuce and he picked away at that until it was gone! My brother said he wouldn’t eat any veggies, but after that, I started giving him romaine lettuce regularly, but I didn’t replace all of the live plants. It was too expensive to do that, but Angelo seemed as happy as a lark! Probably 6 months go by and I think all is well until I am dumping in new water as it had evaporated and I see something really tiny in the water, so I get a closer look and there are a bunch of these teeny tiny worms in the water! Thin as a hair and white squiggly little things! I freak out at that point because I didn’t know what it was (detritus worms), and I take the whole tank down. Rinsed out the rocks and changed filter pads, think everything is good to go! Turn on the filter and bam, little worms come out of the filter tubes back into the tank! I am so mad, but start looking up info about what it is, and find out that these are harmless and show up when there is too much waste from food (strangely, Angelo wouldn’t eat ANY pellets or sticks, so I just started giving him wax worms and meal worms (with calcium powder) because he gobbled those down! I also got these frozen turtle blocks that he loved so I would rotate worms with the frozen turtle food. He was still eating lettuce, so I thought he was good, but there was never food left on the bottom of the tank. In any case, I learned that I should be cleaning the gravel and replacing the water and the worms shouldn’t be an issue, so I start doing that every week, but the worms were MULTIPLYING and FAST! I take the tank down again and pour boiling hot water on the gravel and rinse them all out, clean out the filter tubes, replace all pads, and put it back together. At first, I saw no worms but I was looking hard. Two days later, I see one. I scoop it out with my net and pray that was it. Then I see a few more and a few more, so I stir up the gravel and yep! They are still there! The boiling water didn’t kill them! I wanted to cry. I decided I would vacuum the gravel and change water every other day and hope I could keep them to a minimum, but not joking, within DAYS, these things were multiplying like crazy. I first saw these tiny white dots and I thought they were eggs, so I am vacuuming the gravel and changing out 75% water every other day, and sometimes every day, but to no avail! The worms still multiplied and I couldn’t handle it! So I bought a brand new 55 gallon aquarium (which is what Angelo should have been in to begin with), new filter tubes, pads, new turtle pebbles, all new EVERYTHING. Guess what. NO WORMS. I knew right then that I was going to do a 50% water change every week because I NEVER wanted to deal with worms EVER again! So I am very diligent with vacuuming his pebbles and replacing 50% of the water every single week.
All of that was to say that his tank water is clean. I tested it; no ammonia, no nitrites or nitrates, pH at 8.2. Water seems perfect. I cannot figure out why the water was making Angelo paralyzed??? I think maybe he’s going into hibernation mode??? The next evening, I scoop him out with a net because he’s not coming up for food and his eyes are swollen shut. I drop some Fluker’s eye rinse on each eye, Zoo Med eye drop for Vitamin A and apply the antibiotic to his lids. Slowly but surely, the swelling goes down and he opens his eyes. He seems so lethargic and definitely NOT ok. I decide that I’m not putting him back in the water until his eyes are healed because he seems to do so much better outside of the water. I set up a big Rubbermaid tub with a towel on the bottom and put his lamp overhead of that. I lowered the bulbs because I read that higher temps will help to beat the infection. I start reading about turtle illness trying to find something about water paralyzing the turtle with a Vitamin A deficiency, and come across a page that talks respiratory infections, and yep. That’s what it is! I am diligently doing a 20 minute soak in shallow water enough to cover his tail and half of his shell, but he hasn’t eaten in a week. He’s so lethargic and when I got home late last night, his eyes are swollen closed and he’s not moving. I am just so panicked and scared. I’m trying so hard to help him and he can’t die on me!!! He’s been such a healthy, happy turtle and I am devastated that this is happening! Since he isn’t eating, I am trying to get Vitamin A to him somehow but it’s probably not doing any good... along with the Zoo Med eye drops, I’m squeezing a cod liver oil capsule into his soak praying that it’s getting into his skin somehow. Last night, he was barely moving and I cried. I wrapped him in a little towel and put him under the light to keep him warm and I slept next to the tub. I texted the vet and begged him to get him in today. I woke up to Angelo clawing the side of the Rubbermaid both eyes are OPEN and he’s actively running around in the tub; of course trying to escape. He has a little white stuff on the corners of his mouth and I’m assuming that it’s mucus from the RI. The vet is getting him in at 3:30 today, but if you have ever dealt with an RI before, I would appreciate any advice that you can give. I’m hoping the vet will give him a Vitamin A shot and antibiotic shot today, but how long does this take before he will get better? I’m dry docking him until he’s well. I don’t think the water is helpful at all and probably made it worse. How do you think he got the RI? Do you think the tank has bad bacteria somehow? I’m going to change his water today even though he’s not in his tank for awhile, but is there anything I can do to make sure his water is good? I just cleaned his filter two weekends ago, and don’t want to kill off any good bacteria. I just put some of those BioHome media in one of the trays, too and I bought more for the next filter change. I’d like the bottom tray to be the course sponge with floss on top, but the rest of the trays filled with BioHome. There’s no way that the BioHome could have caused the illness, right? Whatever I need to change about his environment, please let me know! I’m willing to do anything to keep my turtles healthy! The babies are doing great, but I need to get Angelo well and never want this to happen again! I don’t know what I could be doing wrong? I will be providing more variance in their diet (babies are already eating more variety!!!). Could this have been caused by vitamin A deficiency alone???
Steve, I am SO SORRY for the book long message. If you cannot tell, I love my animals and want to give you as much info as possible so you can help if you have ANY advice. I am going to the vet, but an experienced turtle OWNER will always know more in my opinion. The vet may have knowledge about the animal, but not the experience to go with it.
Thank you for reading this (if you have), and hope you have a great day.
Jessie