Hi people, I've have a snake neck turtle and have noticed the top layer of his skin is peeling away on his head and neck. never noticed anything like this before ! last weekend a friend asked if he could put his plec in my tank for the weekend due to his tank smashing now i notice this. am i being paranoid in thinking the plec may having given him something ?
Advice please
- Thread starter GoodfellaUK
- Start date
Sorry can't help much, one of the more knowledgeable members will have to chime in on this. But have heard about plecos sucking on the shell, etc of turtles, that's why it's not really recommended keeping them together.
Do you have any pics? Sometimes if a pleco isn't well fed it will go for other things like fish slime coats and turtle skin/shells. I keep a common pleco with my stinkpot musk turtles and I've never had any issues. I keep him well fed though. But turtles like any other reptile do shed pieces of their skin.
Without pics of the turtle it would be hard to tell what kind of illness it has or if it is even an illness. With that said, turtles do shed their skin, just like all reptiles do. Now if the neck looks red or irritated than you might have a problem. Your best bet is to treat the tank with acroflavin, it will dye your tank green for a few days but will kill all the bacteria that is in there without hurting the turtle or the fish if you have some of them in there. If you still see problems persisting than I would remove the pleco. Also another thing you can do is dry the turtle off and use some topical antibiotic (neosporine) on the neck, allow for drying and put the turtle back in the water, repeat this process until you no longer have the skin problem. I hope this helps you out a little
Thats what it looks like to me, my friend told me a few days later that he had a disease in his tank called cotton something where one of his fishes died and had a like a fur growing on him, which a thanked him for letting me know when he was picking the fish back up and not before me put it in my tank
Thanks for your help
Thanks for your help
Thanks for your advise, he's not got any redness nor does he look sore it just that i saw a fake of skin about a centimeter long and half a centimeter wide and put 2 + 2 together and got 5....ha ha he also is eating just as normal, i'll try and get some pictures and upload them tomorrow. I will also get some acroflavin tomorrow i guess trying that could not do any harm
Thanks again
Thanks again
Finding it hard to get a photo to show the sheding now due to most of the layer now fallen off, but the good news is that the new layer seems to be fine and smooth. I'm now going to keep my 4ft tank just for my snake neck turtle, does anyone have a good link to looking after him? i.e best lighting, temp, which food and how much to feed him/ how often
There are some pretty good turtle care sheets here.
http://www.austinsturtlepage.com/Care/caresheets.htm
http://www.austinsturtlepage.com/Care/caresheets.htm