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is this normal for turtles, Donatello does it once in a while , today i made a partial change of water, and after while he start scratching his shell against the rocks, mmm ??

sounds like he's starting to shed his scutes and is trying to assist them off.

Yes, it's normal. He's shedding and scraping scutes off. Sometimes they get real enthusiastic about it.

Are the rock abrasive at all? If so, he could scratch his new scutes if he happens to shed any. My RES rubs against his corkbark, which doesn't pose a potential problem.

marisa wrote:Are the rock abrasive at all? If so, he could scratch his new scutes if he happens to shed any. My RES rubs against his corkbark, which doesn't pose a potential problem.

No there not, i been tryint to put the smoothest rocks that i found
Thanks for your coments, Is always good to have a opinion from other people with more experience, and is nice to know that we always find more help in this website

Serra---err

I mean my turtle doesn't have a a place for him to scratch his shell...Does that mean shedding will be more difficult?

Tenodera wrote:Serra---err

I mean my turtle doesn't have a a place for him to scratch his shell...Does that mean shedding will be more difficult?

Nope. The scutes will pop off or lift off when they are ready.

To me, it's possible that they will take longer to come off for some turtles. Earlier in the year my RES had some scutes on his plastron that still needed to come off, even though he crawls around on his corkbark. One of the first times I took him outside, he kept crawling to a spot where there were leaves and twigs. He would stop and twist himself back and forth repeatedly and move on to a similar spot. When he moved on, I would find a scute left on the ground. He was obviously using a rougher surface to help him remove the scutes.

Oh...so what should I do?

Tenodera, does Ser.....uh, River's tank still look like this:



She....uh, he can scratch his plastron on the basking platform and could scratch his plastron and sides against the rocks on the bottom of the tank.

Spot's favorite thing to scratch on is a little bridge. it's supposed to be a basking platform for a shallow tank but it's totally underwater in his big tank. He gets under the bridge and rubs away.

Yep! exactly the same except there's a clay flowerpot in it now and he's gotten a bit bigger.

Aha - the flowerpot is where she....uh, he can go to scratch his carapace.