I think my turtle has a cold!!!!!!!!!!

Question
I have a painted turtle, he is about 6 months old and he has not been eating for a couple of weeks, and in the past week i have notices that he has been like sneezing and coughing? He seems okay, he looks okay, but it is just those things. My buddy that also has a painted said that last winter his turtle also stopped eating for a month, something with hibernating? Please help me i do not know what to do but i need to do something!!!!!!

Answer
Here is the deal...

Hibernation is triggered by dropping temps and shortening days. In the first stage, the turtle finds a hibernation site and looses its appetite. Some body and metabolic changes take place, but not too many.

In the second phase, the body and metabolism change a lot as the turtle enters real hibernation. It now burns very little food, produces almost no waste, has almost no heart rate, and is real close to not breathing. The body needs to be withing a certain temp range to do this- too warm and the metabolism stays too high and it burns off energy and dies, Too cold and it freezes. This is oversimplified, but it will work for now.

Now- our pet turtles often enter the first phase. House temps drop, daylight shortens- hibernation is triggered and appetite begins to decline.

The problem is that they end up stuck here- not nice enough to get better, not bad enough to drop into full hibernation.

In this limbo, they can starve, pick up a million bugs, have a reduced immune system, etc.

We combat this by offering a fake summertime. Boost temps from the ideal range of 75-80 to 80-85. Boost basking site temps from 90 to 95. Boost lighting to a little brighter and leave it on for 10 hours a day- making sure that it offers some UV-B rays.

At this point, a lot of keepers start saying 'huh?' They did not know that turtles need heated enclosures or that they need UV-B type lighting for good health.

I find that a lot of keepers are unaware that the recommended tank size is 10 gallons of water per inch of turtle (not a 10 gallon tank per inch- I mean that a 1-inch turtle needs a 1/2 filled 20 gallon tank.) Many keepers, sadly, do not offer enough filtration to keep the tank clean which also contributes to illnesses.

Another problem we see all the time is a poor diet, which also contributes to a variety of illnesses. About 25-40% of the diet can be a high-quality pelleted food, bu the rest should be live or frozen/thawed 'fish food' like small fish, worms, bugs, shrimp, etc. Small turtles usually do well on bloodworms.

Get the habitat and diet going right and everything should be OK for you. You can get more info at the site http://www.austinsturtlepage.com

Good luck@!