Box Turtle Hydration

"Hydration is very important for box turtles as many of them come into the pet stores extremely dehydrated. After purchasing your box turtle from the pet store you're going to want to take it through a process of re-hydration, even if you don't see any signs of dehydration, it's never a bad idea. One of the first things you're going to want to do is you're going to want to check this turtle to make sure it doesn't have signs of dehydration, which would be looking in the area just inside the shell here between the head and the legs. That will tell you, the skin there should be supple, it shouldn't be really sucked in, they shouldn't look too emaciated. That's one sign of dehydration. Now, the first thing you want to do when you get home is soak your box turtle in tepid water for an hour. Seems like a long time but you're going to want to do it for an hour, and then remove it from the water, and put it into its cage that you've set up. This is a process that you're going to want to repeat. Now the first soak is going to last an hour, any soak after that is going to be fifteen minutes at a time, a few times a day. So the following day you're going to want to do it three times, for fifteen minutes, for probably three days. Then you are going to probably be good as far as re-hydration goes. Now you always want to keep a bowl of fresh water in the cage with it. Preferably something that they can climb into, because turtles like to soak themselves. In this cage I don't have the room for something like that so I have to take her out and do that myself. This is regular tap water with an additive in it that you can purchase from your local pet store, or something comparable to it. This is Reptisafe it is basically a dechlorinator, and it removes all of the hard minerals and stuff that can come out of your tap water that can be harmful for your box turtles. I've already added it to this water, that's why it's a little blue. So I'm just going to pour a little bit right here in her dish. You want to make sure that you check the water daily to make sure that it's always clean and fresh. You never want to leave water sitting for more than three days, it can grow bacteria."