General Care Discussion :: How sensitive IS a RES' shell???

[camee1991]

ME TOO! This forum Rocks!

Camee

[kikicool]

ME TOO ME TOO! What's bad is how many of my conversations start with "Today? on the turtle forum?" LOLOL! And I hear "um, what? what kind of forum?" Hee hee hoo hoo!!

[Hoooneylynn]

lol kiki, I always tell my boyfriend.. hey! On turtle talk... they said... and then she said... haha. And he knows kristin quite well because I ALWAYS talk about sheba. hehe.

[blisswolf]

OK, so I brushed my two turtles shells with a new toothbrush. They didn't seem too happy about it at the time, but from what everyone else has said, that's not out of the ordinary. The problem is, since I brushed them down (this was about a month ago) one of my turtles shells almost looks like it's drying out. He goes in and out of the water like usual, nothing has changed. At first I just thought that it was his schutes getting ready to come off. Some schutes have come off, but his shell seems to be getting worse! It's turning lighter in some spots and looks like dry skin on a person! I checked all the shell rot pictures and symptoms and it's not like that at all. Any ideas? Anyone? Help?

[Hoooneylynn]

Can you post some pics? It sounds to me like hes getting ready to shed.. their shells will look like kinda white before they shed...

[blisswolf]

I don't have a digital camera... It would probably be a week or two before I could get a pic up, but I'll see what I can do. I hope that's it, because it's getting worse as time goes on!

[Hoooneylynn]

Does it just look white in some spots? Do those areas smell?

[blisswolf]

Well when he's in the water the shell looks completely normal. It's only when he basks and fully dries out that you can see that the shell is really dry. It doesn't smell. It doesn't seem to hurt him if it's touched. No strange behavior or anything. And it's on the bottom as well as the top...

I'll see if I can piece together some pics from online that kind of look like what's happening:

http://imagecache2.allposters.com/image ... osters.jpg

That is what it looks like between the schutes.

http://www.epodiatry.com/images/cpdryheel.gif

And on the rest of the shell it looks like when people get dry skin like this (i realize this is a persons foot, but it's the best i can do for now)

[adam85491]

I think they are called scutes by the way, and I was about shocked to see a foot as i did not read what was below the link haha.

[Hoooneylynn]

hmm.. the first pic you posted looks like when they are growing/starting to shed to me... my turt looked like that in between the nuchal and marginal space (link to show you what that is)... http://www.redearslider.com/anatomy.html.

And it didnt really look like "dry skin" but it looked almost white. I will try to find pics of it...

here is one I posted that shows between those two areas, but this is after it started to turn brown again:

http://www.redearslider.com/forum/viewt ... t=shedding

[Hoooneylynn]

here are more pics of shedding:
http://www.redearslider.com/forum/viewt ... e+shedding

heres another pic of my turt:



it that what you are talking about? Notice in between those two spaces I said how its all white? And it kinda looks like the dry skin you are describing

[blisswolf]

Yeah, in between looks a lot like that, but 10 times worse. and on the actual schute it's white... it almost looks like the cuttle bone or vitamin turtle white, just tiny patches/spots all over.