General Care Discussion :: Eating basking dock

[pixidust]

Ugh. Yep, Pixi is eating her basking dock made by zoomed. We are in the process of making an ATBA, but ran into a financial hole. Is there anything we can do temporarily to stop her from eating it? Please help!

[ry4nk1msres]

Is pixi just nipping at it or acuallly succeeding at biting peices of? You can use a peice of stone/rock for the time being, i used 2 zilla corner ramps made from good epoxy, grinded em flat on one side, and epoxy'd them together, just an idea, it only the price of the two ramps plus a tube of aquarium epoxy. good luck!

[pixidust]

She is full blown taking bites out of it. Pieces of the dock rest on the top of the water and she mistakes them for food.

[TurtleKeeper48]

Ughh.... Our do this to.

We've noticed that they do it a lot after a feeding if they don't feel they got enought to eat.

We thought cuttle bone would help stop it, as we thought maybe they wanted bites of something hard and crunchy... and giving them more cuttle bone worked a few times to get them to stop taking bites out of the dock. Lately, I've had the worst of our dock eaters start eating dock after a feeding so I offered more cuttle bone and she refused it. I offered pellets and she went for those. That happened twice, so I think they start eating the dock when they want pellets. I think it's because of the similar coloration. We might be wrong - but we think turtle's are kind of dumb.

I've been using those docks for two years and we're just going to discontiue use. Nothing makes the turtles stop eating them except maybe massive over feeding of pellets, but that's not good.

[pixidust]

That's what I figured to do too, but I know it can be bad. As soon as I see a paycheck, I'm building a basking area...

[steve]

Cork or a PVC/Tile are pretty cheap to make but work great.