Posted: Mon Oct 01, 2018 12:57 pm Re: Turtle hesitates to bite food
This is her in her feeding tank in the video. Her normal tank is a 90 gallon aquarium with sand substrate. The tank has an above tank basking area and is filled with with approximately 80 gallons of water and a piece of driftwood. Filter is a Rena Filstar XP. Heater is a Rena SmartHeater.
Her normal diet consists of red leaf lettuce and Zoo Med Natural Aquatic Maintenance Formula. She'll also get other food on occasion (dandelion greens, green leaf lettuce, endive, carrots).
She'll normally bites one piece and then slides into the water to eat. I then tear the remaining lettuce into smaller pieces and toss it in the feeding tank. However, she currently exhibits the same behavior with the pieces in the water. She eventually eats all of the food, but she hesitates during the first couple bites.
I'm holding the food in the video to better demonstrate the behavior in question, but she normally tries to bite the food out of my hand when I first put her in the feeding tank. Her biting the food from my hand is normal. The hesitation is not.
Last night I noticed her basking light was burnt out and her heater quit working. The water temperature was down to 68 degrees. I replaced the basking light, and increased the temperature in the house (I'll pick up a new heater today). The water temp is now at 72 degrees. She is not showing any signs of respiratory infection, but that's always a worry.
Let me know if you need any other info.