Hey guys, welcome back to the channel, it's the Turtle Girl.
Today, we're talking about turtle shedding.
So, I noticed that Nemo was just shedding recently, so I thought I'd do a quick video to show you guys
what this is, why they do it, how it works, and what you can do to help it along.
So basically, turtles shed both their skin and their shell scutes
in order to keep their shell healthy and to allow growth.
So when they shed their skin, you can only see it in the water
and it'll look kind of translucent and metallic. You'll know it's shedding because it looks kind of thin and wispy
Some people mistake it for fungus
but if it's thin and wispy, it's probably shedding. This is totally normal, all reptiles do it.
The only time you would need to be concerned is when you see excessive shedding. This is when the skin is just
sloughing off and there's a lot of it, you can see it very clearly,
and there's just layers upon layers of skin coming off. This usually means one of two things:
Either it is a sign of rapid growth, which can be caused by overfeeding or high temperatures -
so if you notice that your turtle is growing really fast
and they're shedding a lot, then you might want to tweak either how much you're feeding them
or the temperature of the water. Alternatively, this could mean that
your turtle has some sort of irritation or infection, so you might want to investigate that.
However, shedding of the skin is usually a pretty easy process - nothing to be worried about.
In fact, you won't always notice that they're doing it.
Then there is also scute shedding. Scute shedding is the way that they allow their shell to grow and
keep their shell healthy. Scutes are just the little portions or sections of the turtle shell.
Periodically your turtles will shed these. For growing turtles,
this is more often in order to allow for their growth, whereas adult turtles just do it to make sure that
their shell is healthy.
It's a pretty regular occurrence for most turtles.
I say most because certain turtles don't shed until a certain age or they shed in a different way.
For example, diamondback terrapins won't shed until they are adults whereas things like soft shells
will have to shed differently because they don't actually have hard shells. But most turtles will shed their scutes.
Some indicators that your turtle is shedding
is first of all, you might notice that their shell looks a little bit metallic
or shiny when they're in the water,
and this is a result of air bubbles being trapped underneath the scutes,
because those scutes are loose. So that would be your first, (kind of most obvious) indicator of shedding.
Also, you might notice that your turtle is basking in an effort to get UVB to keep the shell healthy and to promote shell growth.
Then you might notice that your turtle is rubbing its shell against decorations.
So these are all good signs that your turtle is shedding.
Then when they actually start shedding, the scutes start coming up in
papery thin sheets and these are made out of keratin, the same material as our fingernails,
And you usually can just find these floating around the tank and you can take them out.
There are a couple things you can do to help shedding along and make it an easier process for you and the turtle.
So first of all, something really easy you can do is add a pellet to their diet that is high in vitamin E
and vitamin A. So vitamin E and vitamin A just
help promote a healthy shell and shell growth,
all those types of good things. The pellet that I use and that a lot of other turtle keepers use is
Hikari koi wheat germ. Now, it is a pellet made for koi, but it's high in both those two vitamins
so this really helps with shell growth and you can just replace about
30% of your turtles normal pellets with this and that can really help shedding along.
Links to Hikari wheat germ in the description if you want to check that out.
Another thing you can do is take them outside for
some real UVB, of course when it's warm enough - at least over 70* F
and if they're younger than probably more like 73* or 75*, just to make sure they don't get cold.
But you can take them outside when it's sunny for some
real UVB, because the artificial stuff that we provide them
isn't always the strongest or the best, so it's a good idea to take them outside
and just give them 15 to 30 minutes of
outdoor time in order to let them soak up that real,
strong, healthy UVB actually from the Sun.
Now, you just want to make sure that you are ALWAYS watching your turtle when they go outside.
They can move surprisingly fast, so just always watch your turtle when they're outside and
make sure there's no predators around. Make sure your cat
or dog isn't out there. They can quickly snatch up your turtle and bad situations can happen.
Just watch your turtle if you take them outside, but natural sunlight is a
great thing that really helps with shedding.
Finally, another thing that you can try is taking a soft bristled toothbrush and
gently rubbing your turtle's shell with this. This will also help clean the shell and loosen the scutes.
Now, some turtles don't always like this, so if your turtle seems really
irritated because they feel the bristles through their shell, then just leave them be and
give them some rough decorations for them to
scratch their shells on. But if they'll allow you, that can be another thing that helps with shedding.
Now, one thing you should never ever ever do when a turtle is shedding is
once you see the scutes coming up and they start peel off, never use force
to pull off those with your own hands, because though you might be
intending to help that turtle shed, you could actually
end up hurting them more, because by pulling up the scute you could
accidentally be damaging the growing shell underneath. So never pull up a turtle scute
that is being shed in effort to try to remove it with force. Just let it fall off naturally.
They will eventually come off naturally.
So yeah,
shedding is a totally normal thing.
Nothing to be worried about. If you have any questions about it feel free to leave it in the comments!
Thank you guys so much for watching,
I hope this video helped you, and I'll see you next Friday!