Quote:
Originally Posted by tomsneade
Hi folks. I am Tom and have just joined this group. I have had a 10 month old hermann tort that sleeps all but 2 hours in every 24 and is sometimes reluctant to eat. Every other day he will happily devour dandelion leave and flowers, then he will show little interest in food for 2 or 3 days. Sometimes he is very lively, sometime quite the opposite ! He looks bright eyed, and bushy tailed and poo's and wees every couple of days. He is in a viv with the temp set at 30 degrees, which is on for 12 hours a day. Just wondering if this is normal behavior . Many thanks. (Just this morning, he woke at 9 am, when his heating/light came on....came out of his bed...basked under the lamp for 1 hour and returned to bed !)
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Hi there Tom and welcome to the forum. I agree that the minimum hotspot temperature should be 32 C during the day. One reason that some of us are not keen on vivs is that you can't have much of what we call a temperature gradient. If it's 32C at the hotspot then in a viv it's not always possible to have the cooler end at 20C depending on the size of the viv.
Air circulation is important as well - see what you can do with the viv to increase ventilation.
It's not unusual for really small ones to spend a lot of time sleeping / resting.
Especially with little ones it is useful to keep a monthly (or so) track of weight. This will help you to notice if your tortoise is not thriving. The scales don't need to cost very much but with a smaller tortoise you will need something that measures in individual grammes. If you keep using the same scales it's not much of an issue if they are not fantastically accurate because you will get a good idea if it's heading in the right direction.
A wider variety of food would be good. Can I suggest you learn to recognise a few more weeds? Plantains are found in most gardens and are an excellent tortoise food.
Have you got a source of uvb in the viv?
Jonathan