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Turtle Troubles2007-11-24 2:02:52

If your turtle has swollen eyes, it can be caused by several different factors -- but is usually always treatable. The most common, as another poster here noted, is a vitamin A deficiantcy (more common in land turtles than water turtles). The second cause is excessive stress, which weakens a turtle's immune system (hey, stress plays a number on US, too!) and allows them to fall victim to fungal and bacterial problems that they would ordinarilly never worry about. Treatment involves three steps:

1) Purchase a bag of powdered tetracycline (sometimes called OXYtetracycline) at any farmer's feed store. This usually costs less than $5 a bag, and you've got more than enough to treat your turtle. Two to three times a day, create a mix of water and tetracycline -- just enough tetracycline to make the water a light yellow -- and soak the turtle for 15-20 minutes in this solution. I've used five gallon buckets for this in the past, and would recommend them since your turtle can't excape it if you should have to tend to something else while soaking it. MAKE SURE THE TURTLE CAN REACH THE TOP OF THE WATER TO BREATH. Simply adding antibiotics to the turtle's normal water area won't help: Tetracycline is light-sensitive, and loses effectiveness within approximately a half an hour of exposure.

2) Get yourself two thermometers. Place one in the general area of his water, and one by his basking area. Unless you plan on hybernating him (which I don't recommend if he has eye problems), you'll want to keep the temperature between 75-85 degrees. Lower than 75 degrees, and any food your turtle eats will merely rot in its digestive tract rather than contribute to nutrition. Fish water heaters, high-watage light bulbs (100-150W depending on the depth of the tank it's being housed in), and ceramic heaters are all options. NEVER allow the turtle to be close enough to touch any sort of bulb or ceramic heater. And no "hot rocks" for water turtles! They aren't meant for moist environments -- nor do they do anything to raise the ambient air temperatures. The overall temperature should be more of a consideration than distance between a light and the turtle, so long as the light's well out of the turtle's reach (they can actually get out of the darnedest places, so make sure nothing climbable can lead to the light) Keep in mind that if you use nothing but light bulbs to heat the tank, your turtle will experience quite the temperature drop at night when the lights go out. Ceramic heaters may be more expensive than bulbs, but they throw no light, and have no filaments to burn out. You can light a cigarette off of one, though -- so give it distance from not only the turtle, but drapes and other flamables as well.