General Care Discussion :: Shedding Problem

[cloverRES]

Hello! My RES Clover was rescued from a not so good home. She was only given protein, and as a result, has some pyramiding on her shell. They are green from the algea underneath, and I don't know how to encourage her to shed them off. She NEVER basks, so I don't know what to do to make them come off. I try to take her outside for sunlight as often as I can, but I've only had her for 2 months. Should I try to peel them off? Let me know what to do! thanks
CloverRES

[SINI5T3R]

NEVER try to peel off a turtles scoots. There are hundreds if not thousands of nerves in there shells and that can hurt them pretty bad. What I would do is go to walmart, buy one of those kid pools for like 20$ (i got a 600 gallon pool from walmart for 22$, the big plastic ones with like fish on the sides for kids to swim in) and just let Clover swim in that for the whole day an at night move it back into the tank. If you really wanted to you could put bricks in the middle of the pool and just leave the turtle out there year round and clover would do great. I had LOADS of fish and my turtles in the pool and even with four rows of like 5 bricks each row in the middle there was still LOADS and LOADDDDS of room. The Sun will do the job on the shell but pyramiding is almost impossible to correct, all you can do now is help out a little. It can be corrected but will always be there somewhat and it takes a REALLLY long time for the shell to drop back down to normal. turtles have a slow metabolism.

[steve]

Can you post a pic? If they are at a point that algae is growing under them, you need to give the shell a thorough examination for anything else that might be growing or collecting there.