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Hi! I haven't posted in a while because I was in the hospital for 2 months. In the two months I was away my little Sylar got noticably bigger! When I got him at christmas time he was the size of a half dollar, and now he's the size of a silver dollar. My hubby was feeding him the noname pellets that we were given twice a day while I was gone. When I got home I reduced him to once a day and picked up Reptomin baby pellets. He gets 4 or so pellets every day, I feed him meal worms maybe once or twice a week and recently an occational Rosey Red. When he's basking you can see obvious lines beween his scutes and some scutes are concave instead of covex. I wasn't sure if this kind of growth was normal. maybe I'm feeding him too much protein?
Also, when he's in the water if you look closely, there is this fine white cottony stuff around his neck. I was thinking this could be some kind of fungal infection, but he basks all the time. I tried putting one of those turtle shaped tablets in his tank, but he just ate it. Does the Sulfa Dip work for that?
Here's a pick of his shell (couldn't get a pic showing that white stuff.)
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I'm so glad to hear you're home again after your stay in the hospital. Two months is a long, long time. Hope you're feeling good these days!

Sylar is a cute little guy isn't he.

Those very wide seams between the scutes are signs of very rapid growth. You are right - his diet needs some adjustment. Have you read up on the nuitrition section on this site? Here's the link:

http://www.redearslider.com/index_nutrition.html

I think in addition to adjusting the quantity you should also take a look at what he's eating. For a healthy turtle, you should feed as many good quality pellets as would fit inside his head (not including his neck) if his head were hollow. If someone in your family (no names mentioned) tends to overfeed, you can help control this with one of the pill boxes that people use with the seven little boxes - one for each day of the week. Fill up the boxes once a week and then the rule is, no more pellets per day than what's in the box. I'm not sure how big the reptomin baby pellets are, but you can judge for yourself how many of them would fit in Skyler's hollow head.

Once Skykler's around 4" long, you can cut back to a headfull of pellets every other day.

The site I provided above names some brands of quality pellets. Reptomin baby is one of the very good ones.

You can stop with the mealworms. The contain a substance that interfers with calcium absorption, and turtles need a lot of calcium for healthy shell and bones.

Does he get cuttlebone? You can put pieces of cuttlebone in the tank (get cuttlebones in the bird section of the pet store, they're very inexpensive) for Skyler to nibble on when he's craving calcium.

An occasional rosy red minnow is fine. The chase gives him some exercise too.

Skyler needs some plant matter in his diet. Young turtles aren't as enthusiastic about veggies as grown turtles, but they will eat some. He can have green leafy veggies like leaf lettuce daily and a couple of times a week he can have carrot peels, tomato, blueberries, steamed sweet potato, bell pepper, fresh basil, etc. Water plants like anacharis are also good for turtles to eat.

Skyler needs to go ahead and shed those old baby scutes. The best thing for shedding is lots of good basking under good UVB light. In addition, foods containing vitamin E are helpful. Here's a list of vitamin e containing foods:

Tomato
Sweet potato
Turnip greens
Blueberries
Apple skin

If what you're seeing around his neck is whitish, translucent whisps then it's normal turtle skin shedding. If the skin shedding seems heavy it's probably because he's been getting too rich a diet. The other thing that can cause abnormally heavy shedding is temps that are too warm. Water temp for a little one like Skyler should be around 78 degrees.

ohhh! thank you for the info. I think I'm doing better with the AMOUNT of food since I cut him back, but most of this growth occured before I realized it! I'm glad you told me about the mealworms though. I have tubs of mealworms for Sylar and Ryoga(Leopard Gecko). I guess I'll keep the meal worms just for Ryoga now! Unless it's bad for geckos too, but mealworms have been on every list of foods I've seen for geckos. I picked up dandalion greens for Ziggy(sun conure) just this afternoon...so I'll try some of those with Sylar. I have a bunch of birds so I know I have a cuttle bone around here somewhere. I'm pretty sure he'll eat THAT 'cause he ate that stupid white chalky water treatment block!
....And I a SOOO glad to know that white stuf is normal. I guess I can stop with those water treatment blocks turned chew toys now.
*PS* Does your turtle accually CATCH the Rosey Reds? *heh* I put 3 in his tank and he chased them for a few minutes but didnt even come CLOSE to catching them. After that he just gave up. He just looks at me like "why am I going to chase that thing, when I know you are going to feed me anyway?" he's already begging! He can only get them if I put them in the little plastic carrier with him!

Even if he can't catch them now, let him keep trying. If you just give in and make it easier for him, he'll never need to get better. But if you let him keep chasing them until he gets a little bigger/faster, it's better that way. So, just leave the rosies in there, and they'll help clean up the tank, and then one day, one or more will be gone!

If your gecko is having trouble eating all the mealworms, I believe bluebirds can help. I understand they're very fond of mealworms.

OMG, Sylar loved dandilion greens more than anything! He went NUTS when he saw them, almost jumped out of the tank!

You may want to think about dropping backing the feeding to once per day for a while.

I already cut him back to once a day when I got home from the hospital. he's been eating once a day for about a month now. The other day when he got the dandilion greens I didn't even give him pelets that day.

Good on the dandelion greens---they're excellent for Skylar.

that happened to my baby turtle too. see i feed it like 7 pellets a day and dint feed it for lik 2 days afterwards. soon i started noticing that the shell was starting to stretch which i thought was breaking. now i know its just growing and i have to manage how much i feed it. once i started feeding it 2 pellets every 3 days it started losing its little chubby curve on its underside. now its being happy swimming around its 35 gallon tank freely with its little girl friend around ;]