Always Hungry

Bowser eats.  A LOT.Even when she isn't hungry, she will still beg for food.
All she has to do is wave her little arms around (a turtle's version of snapping their fingers, I guess) and her wish is our command!
Take a look at a video I took of her earlier trying to get my attention:

And I had the nerve to ignore her - something that rarely happens with anybody!

She had already eaten a ton of pellets!

I know, I'm so mean.  :(

Also, she's very picky.  Some pellets/food sticks are her favorites.  She LOVES ReptoTreat Suprema, Wardley's, Nutrafin, HBH and Reptomin.  She will not eat Zoomed adult turtle pellets, Zilla aquatic turtle food, HBH turtle treats, or anything else with a low protein level.  Low protein pellets are much better for her, but they have less fish/shrimp/poultry in it and more wheat and other grains.  They smell like hay, compared to smelling like seafood.  She won't even touch the "healthy" ones.  And if we trick her into eating them (mixing them with her favorites) she will spit them back out.  Also, she won't eat any pellets if they have been in the water for more than a few minutes.  If she misses them when we first drop them in and they puff up, they are no good in her eyes.  She occasionally will bite one but then quickly spits it out.  This means they get stuck to the filter intake, lower the quality of the water, and make more work for us.  The things we do for our turtle!

More photos coming soon! :)

Weekend adventures!

Miss Bowser has had quite the weekend!
Last week the magnetic floating dock that I ordered did not work out for her.  She had trouble climbing onto it and when she finally got up there it would tilt from side to side and she kept falling off. :(

Well, the concept was good...

Poor baby! :(

On Friday we went shopping for supplies to build her a brand new dock that didn't rely on magnets, suction cups, or floating.  Oh no, this would be the best dock ever!

My dad took all of the measurements and after hours of shopping and constructing, Bowser had her own pier!  He used egg crate, pvc pipe, zip ties and non-adhesive shelf liner.

The finished product

Egg crate ramp, secured by zip ties.

Ah, much better. :)

On Sunday we did a water change and while that was going on we put her in her own swimming pool and let her enjoy REAL sunlight for the first time in many months.  What a way to spend the first day of Spring!

We put her old dock in there to give her something to climb onto....I sat her up there, though.  LOL

Once we (mostly Joe) were done with the water change we put her back in her tank and she enjoyed many more hours of basking on her new pier.
That was Miss Bowser's weekend!

Underwater Basking

I've recently seen Bowser all spread out in basking pose on the underwater ramp that connects to her dock.
Silly turtle, basking UNDERWATER!  She turns her head and just looks at me like "Ooh, I'm so cool all stretched out sunbathing.  Aren't you jealous?"
More pictures coming soon...

Go Fish!

Miss Bowser loves to eat.
We feed her well, but she will beg for food all day long, acting as if we starve her.
She flails her little arms around, dives up and down, splashes water and starts smacking her mouth.  She has us trained very well.  All she has to do is beg and we instantly reach for a can of food.
She can even differentiate between regular food and treats.  You can hold the two cans up and she will only follow the one that has treats in it.
Anyway, when we first got her we bought some rosy red minnows for her to chase around in the tank and have as a fun snack.  Well, she's a bit lazy and figured  "These fish swim way too fast!  Why do the work when I can just beg and have food dropped right in front of me?"
Those fish stayed in the tank with her for over a month until we decided to get rid of them.
Fast forward to last month, we wanted to give it another try and this time purchased some shiners.
She devoured them all within minutes. O_O   Talk about one full turtle!
Since that was her reaction, we agreed to only feed her those as rare treats, once a month at the most since she's becoming a little porker.
We got some more shiners yesterday as a Valentine's Day treat (hey, we were all stuffing our faces with chocolates!)
These fish were slightly smaller than the ones we got before, and they were faster.
It took her a little while to catch the first one, but one she got the taste of fish she was a turtle on a mission!
She ate three more pretty quickly, and the last one was hiding stealthily behind the filter hose.
Bowser gave up on getting that one and went up on her dock to bask and digest her wonderful feast.
She didn't forget about the ninja fish....it was no match for a ninja turtle!  She finally caught it for a lovely dessert.
Here's a video of her catching the first fish:

On the prowl!

This is the life!

While the temperature outside is currently 25°F, Miss Bowser is oblivious to it and living the good life.
Thanks to her underwater heater the water temperature is a comfortable 80°F and she has been doing a lot of basking under the heat lamp.

Ah, so nice and comfy. :-)

Although she is getting the heat and UVB that she needs, I cannot wait until the weather warms up enough to take her outside for natural sunlight.  She really needs to shed her scutes and natural sunlight could help.

Sinking Ship

Bowser has grown since July.  A LOT.
She was barely 4 inches long (shell length) when we got her, and her claws didn't even make a mark when she scratched you.  Now she's over 6 inches long and her claws can do some damage.  She doesn't scratch to be aggresive like other animals, but when you hold her she gets scared and starts flailing her legs around to get a grip.  So needless to say, we pick her up with a towel now.  Anyway, where I'm going with this is that she's also much heavier now and her basking dock is having trouble standing up to her weight.
Check out how much the dock sunk when she was basking today:

"Umm...guys, my dock is sinking....buy me another ok?"

The problem is that the dock we have is the biggest one you can buy that she won't eat.

Yes, we had a big problem a while back about her eating her old dock, which was made of a foam/resin material that she could easily take chunks out of.  She ate so much of that dock that it caused turtle tummy troubles and very poor water quality.
Our only other option is to build a homemade dock or perhaps an above tank basking area.
Not that it's expensive, but we're not too crafty when it comes to things like that.

So here's a photo of the old dock, when she had just started to eat it

By the time we got the current dock she had eaten much more.

This brings me to the topic that we have to be very careful about what we put into the tank.

Nothing that she can get stuck in, bite pieces off of, try to eat, break, or even think about destroying.

We have gone through so many props and other aquarium items and have had a few scares that lead us to believe that we will one day have to keep the tank completely bare.

Right now she has her Mayan pyramid, decorative chair, small treasure chest and three golf balls to play with.  And what does she go for?  The digital thermometer that's stuck to the glass.  Yep, that's Bowser for ya!

More photos and videos to come...

*yawn*

I wanted to start a long post about the recent things that Bowser has done, but I think that a cute video of her yawning would suffice. ^_^