General Care Discussion :: eating bits of the Turtle Dock

[sacrilegious]

hello I am wondering what to do, if my turtle was chewing bits of the old turtle dock to the point where a significant corner was being lost, and the dock was majorly algae infested, I got a new turtle dock of bigger size because my turtle has grown quite a bit in about 1.5 years. But im finding she is still eating or chewing bits of the dock again >_< , and yes i am feeding every morning and evening a good amount of pellets and variety such that the turtle should not be hungry

the turtle docks i've gotten are both from ZooMed Laboratories Inc, called 'Turtle Dock', which is a floating dock made of what looks like some sandy synthetic plastic like material attached via suction cups to a rack

tried a search, and could only get something about 'turtle eating silicon'...

thanks in advance!

[Rubicon]

Mine was chewing on his dock. He ate a huge piece off of it. So I started giving them cuttle bone and it stopped immediately.


He chewed so much, that he actually ate away one of the holes where the black frame goes thru.

[SpotsMama]

What Rubicon said is very typical. Lots of turtles will chew on their docks when they are craving calcium. If they have cuttlebone to chew on, they leave the docks alone.

[sacrilegious]

are you sure? i give mine frequently (about once a week) the size of about a finger nail (which seems like a lot)

like how much will be too much?

[mccuen]

Our turtle was biting the dock too and we put a whole cuttle bone (backing removed of course) in the water until it's gone and she stopped biting on the dock too. It will eventually sink and we just take it out and let it dry out for a couple of days then put it back in the tank.

[Karl]

my turtles also have a cuttlebone but they are still eating pieces off their dock when I first introduced them to the cuttlebone they were excited and ate it but now they don't care about it.

[sacrilegious]

wow to put a whole cuttlebone in to prevent this?

is that healthy? i avoid putting anything thats more than a finger nail size a week, because i worry mine will eat the entire thing if i put it in, and result in calcium toxicity

clarification, is that possible? i mean i prefer it still not eat the dock

[Caphits]

you can safely put in much more than 1 fingernail a week.

[mccuen]

It takes our turtle about 2 weeks or a little more to eat a whole cuttle bone. Our turtle doesn't continuously eat it, not to say yours won't, all turtles are different. You can try it and if you see that your turtle eats the whole cuttle bone in a a few days then try breaking it in half or just take it out and put it back in a few days.

Here is a link where someone else was asking about eating the dock you may can find some information there also..

http://www.redearslider.com/forum/viewt ... highlight=

[Rosepruner]

hahaha, my turtle has a cuttle bone but he's still trying to eat his dock and the big shale rocks I have in there. I htink it's just the perrogative of RES's to eat EVERYTHING.

[novroz]

What Rubicon said is very typical. Lots of turtles will chew on their docks when they are craving calcium. If they have cuttlebone to chew on, they leave the docks alone.

I have the same problem...but never realized this fact!! when I think about it, she always did it when her cuttlebone is out

[TurtleLover_S&B]

Yeah,I've heard of many people's turtle biting the dock.Especially the ZooMed basking dock.I agree with SpotsMama.He's probably not getting enough calcium,like everybody else has said.Almost everytime I've heard about turtles biting the basking dock,it's because the lack of enough calcium.

[Rubicon]

I also put a very thin coat of silicone around the area to prevent any resparked intrest.