Eastern box turtle, had her since July, indoor enclosure. For the last couple of weeks she sits in the water dish for hours at a stretch rather than soaking and getting out. She still eats when I put food down and she does burrow at night.
I know some soaking is normal but this looks like she has moved in. Substrate is coco coir, no leaf litter, and I mist maybe twice a week. Is she telling me something about the setup?
Check your temperatures too, because the other reason for sitting in water is being too warm. You want a clear gradient, a warm area and a distinctly cooler one, measured with a probe rather than assumed.
And while you are at the dish: box turtles are not strong swimmers. Water up to about her chin when she is standing, wide enough to walk in and out of without climbing, and changed daily, because they do tend to use it as a toilet.
Soaking after a meal or before a hide is completely routine. Getting out again is the part yours has stopped doing.
Since she is eating and burrowing I would work on the humidity first. The version that comes to me instead of to a thread has swollen or closed eyes, which in box turtles often traces to infection or a vitamin A problem, bubbles or discharge at the nose, noisy breathing, a soft or oddly growing shell, or floating lopsided.
Flaky discoloured skin alongside constant soaking is worth a look too. Mites and skin irritation push them into the water as well.
@hygrometer_bought · last wk. · 3 replies
Misting twice a week with no leaf litter is almost certainly it. Box turtles want moderate to high humidity and substrate damp enough to burrow into properly, and in a dry enclosure the water dish is the only wet thing in the room. So she has gone and sat in it.
Get a hygrometer rather than guessing. Then deepen the substrate, mix in some leaf litter, and wet it down through rather than spraying the surface. Mine stopped living in her dish within about four days of that.
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@dish_all_afternoon · last wk.
How deep is deep enough? She is about twelve centimetres across.
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@leaf_litter_deep · last wk.
Deep enough that she disappears into it and the bottom stays damp when the top dries, which in practice means more than you think is reasonable. Leaf litter on top holds moisture at the surface and gives her somewhere to go that is not the dish.
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