If the heater is already at maximum, you might consider upgrading to a more powerful version. If the temperature of your water is too low you can solve this by simply turning up the water heater, and depending on how cold the water was your turtle will soon start eating in a few hours, or more if the water was very cold. If you keep the water temperature between 75 and 80 degrees, then your turtles should start eating again in no time. But in general, it’s between 75 and 80° Fahrenheit (24 and 27° Celsius). The exact water temperature varies from species to species. If the temperature of the water is not warm enough, your turtle will stop eating because it can’t properly digest the food, and it can get sick. Turtles are cold-blooded animals, which means that they don’t produce any body heat, so they rely on the surrounding temperature to warm their bodies. Quick note: Turtles can survive without food for very long periods of time, so if your turtle hasn’t eaten in 3 or 4 days, while it’s not good, you should know that this had no effect on the health of your turtle. So let’s take a look at why your turtle is not eating and what you can do to solve this problem. And of course, there is always the chance that something else is keeping your turtle from eating. And those fluctuations can affect your turtle enough to make it stop eating. Other possible reasons are stress, inadequate basking area, pregnancy, and sickness.ĭuring the winter the temperature drops, and even if our homes are warmed, there will be some fluctuations in temperature. So I decided to write this short guide to help other people that have this problem.ĭuring the winter when temperatures drop the metabolism of a turtle starts to slow down as it prepares to hibernate, during this time the turtle will eat less food, or it will stop eating completely. I’ve also been faced with this problem multiple times with different turtles. This way, as soon as the first signs of spring arrive, they can shake off those winter chills and paddle back into reptilian action.Every turtle owner will face this problem at some point, your turtle will stop eating for no apparent reason. “Hibernating turtles are not comatose, but remain vigilant during overwintering,” the scientists concluded in their paper. The light and warmth, they found, provoked immediate responses, whereas the vibration and oxygen did not, ScienceNOW reports. When the turtles began to hibernate, however, the researchers began to mess with them, flipping on the lights, adding more oxygen to the tank, vibrating the water or warming things up. In a second experiment, they locked turtles in a cold, dark watery chamber for two weeks, tricking the animals into thinking it was winter. When they deprived those turtles of oxygen or made conditions extremely cold, they found that the animals still registered neuronal responses to light. First, the researchers anesthetized the turtles and inserted electrodes into their heads. As ScienceNOW reports, researchers performed two experiments on the turtles to test their awareness. Turtles turn out to be pretty in tune to what’s going on around them. Now, however, new findings challenge that notion. Researchers assumed they entered a coma-like condition of complete disfunction and lack of awareness. They turn off energy-taxing brain functions and seem completely out of it. In this state, they don’t need to breathe. As they become colder, their heart rate slows to as little as one beat every couple of minutes. They partially embed themselves in the pond mud, then wait as their body temperature drops. When temperatures dip below about 50 degrees, aquatic turtles like red-eared sliders take to the pond, where they will spend the next two or three months submerged and hibernating.
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