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Russian Tortoise Questions

22 16:01:40

Question
Ayden the Tortoise
Ayden the Tortoise  
Hello, my name is Miranda and i recently bought a Russian Tortoise. The pet store said that he is anywhere from 8 months to a year old and male. He is about 4.5 inches long and about 3.5 inches wide. I keep him in a clear-ish(as in it is clear but clouded) 23gallon plastic tub and bought the Reptisun combo pack at my local pet store with a 100watt heat lamp and a 5.0uvb fluorescent lamp. The temperature at the warm end is almost 80 but his rock (black shale) seems warmer and on the cool end is about 72-74 usually. For his diet i bought a bag of what the pet store was feeding him, Zilla Reptile Munchies Vegetable Mix mixed with some fresh lettuce greens from the store (dusted with ZooMed Repticalcium twice a week) which he seems to eat fine twice to three time a day. I originally had a shallow tray in which he could soak, but he seemed completely uninterested and wouldn't even drink out of it, drinking instead out of the small water dish that i had set up beside the food bowl, so i removed the large water tray because it was just becoming a useless mud puddle. I was wondering a few things as i only bought him about a week ago....1) is a blend of ordinary topsoil(the main component), a small amount of tropical soil (which seems more like a moss/soil blend once soaked in water) and sphagnum moss an all right bedding for him? He seems happy with it but i want to make sure that I'm doing things correctly. 2) since i am giving him calcium with his food, does he need a cuttle rock? what exactly is a cuttle rock, as i have only a vague understanding of what it is and why he may need one? 3) he seems to actually want to be picked up and sitting on my lap when I'm watching TV or on the computer, but he also buries his head in the leg of my pants or shirt. should i worry about him suffocating himself or something or will he just walk backwards if he can't breathe? it seems like he would move if that were the case but i wouldn't want to be wrong and then him get hurt....

Answer
Hi Miranda,

The first thing I should tell you is to not rely on anything the pet store told you.  Their advice is usually erroneous at best.  First of all, your tortoise is mature or near to it, which means at least five years old and quite possibly older than that.  A Russian tortoise under a year old is quite small (100g or less) and can't possibly be confused with one the size of yours (which is probably in the 300-400g range).  This seems to be a common...um, lie that pet stores tell.  I've heard from many, many people told the same thing, but if the pet stores actually knew anything about the tortoises they sell they would know that a 4" Russian tortoise is not a year old!  http://russiantortoise.org/hatchling_care.htm (scroll down for some size comparison pictures)  

A very young tortoise also can't be sexed (another clue that yours is mature)--they all look female until mature.  At 4", if yours looks male then that's what you have, but if it still looks female it could still mature into a male over the next year or so.  If you have a tortoise that still looks female at 5" or 6", then it likely really is female (females get quite a bit bigger than males).  Here's a link with pictures that should help you confirm if your tortoise is a male: http://www.russiantortoise.net/male_female.htm.  If you're not sure, post a very clear picture of the hind end and I'll see if I can sex it for you.

OK, now let's go over the setup.  You need a larger enclosure.  The bare minimum I would recommend is a 50 gallon rubbermaid bin, and I prefer to see them in something larger than that.  You can build an outdoor enclosure for the warmer months, too.  Indoors during winter, I use metal or poly stock tanks, but you can build a tortoise table, use an old bookcase turned on its back, etc.  

For substrate, I'd use a 50/50 mix of coir (Ecoearth or Bed-A-Beast) and playsand.  This is a good substitute for soil, allowing for moisture retention and burrowing.  Keep it a little damp to maintain some humidity.  Other substrates such as bark aren't nearly as good as the coir/sand mix.

I would return the bulbs you were sold.  If you're using a basic heat bulb, you can use a 100w floodlight instead of a "special" overpriced reptile bulb.  You can also buy a combination heat/UVB bulb if you want (ZooMed Powersun), or use the floodlight in combination with a Reptisun 10.0.  The 5.0 bulb doesn't provide enough UVB (see http://russiantortoise.org/uvb.htm). If you use the Powersun (buy it online, btw, as it will be considerably cheaper) it will need to be replaced yearly; the Reptisun needs to be replaced every six months.  

There should be a basking temperature of 90-95 degrees, measured on the substrate directly under the basking lamp.  Don't measure air temperature, as this is misleading and may cause you to unknowingly overheat your tortoise.  There should be a cool area of 70-75 degrees (again, measured on the substrate), but the basking temperature is more important.  As long as there's a warm basking area it doesn't matter if the cool area is a little less than 70 degrees.  

There should always be a water dish large enough for him to get into completely.  It does get dirty, but it's important for them to be able to sit in water if they desire.  Indoors, the basking light can be very dehydrating (one reason why the substrate should be damp), and they don't have access to long burrows the way they do in the wild.  Chronic dehydration can lead to serious health issues, so it's important to keep them hydrated.  

Get rid of the commercial tortoise food.  Pet stores feed what's convenient, and not necessarily what's good for them.  Russian tortoises are herbivores that should be fed leafy greens and weeds.  Lettuce is OK as part of a varied diet, but it's low on the nutritional scale so should be limited.  Better greens are turnip, mustard, kale, collards, dandelion, endive, raddichio; along with weeds such as clover, chicory, sow thistle, plantain, mallow, chickweed, hawkbit; viola, hibiscus, prickly pear cactus, nasturtium, rose petals, etc.  Make sure anything from your garden is unsprayed.  Avoid vegetables and fruit.  If you build an outdoor pen, you can plant it with weeds and edible plants and allow the tortoise to graze for itself.

Don't feed more than once a day.  In the wild they have to roam quite a distance to find food, so overfeeding can be harmful.  It's also better to rely on a good, varied diet than to supplement with calcium, because it's possible to overdose.  Put a cuttlebone in the enclosure instead--the tortoise will nibble it for extra calcium as needed.  They know their requirements better than we do!  A cuttlebone comes from the cuttlefish (which is really a type of cephalopod like a squid: http://www.google.com/search?q=cuttlefish&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla) and is more or less solid calcium carbonate.

It's best not to handle them too much because it's stressful for them.  Their natural inclination is to burrow when they feel exposed, because that's how they hide from predators, and that's what your tortoise is doing when he hides his head.  

I hope I answered your questions.  Russian tortoises are very hardy and do very well if given plenty of space and a good diet, and are very interesting and rewarding pets.