Witnessing a change in your pet turtle’s shell color can be intriguing, puzzling, and even worrying, A transformation to a metallic silver, from a more organic green, black, or brown is quite the change
This article looks into why this may be happening with your turtle
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Why is my turtle’s shell turning silver?
Turtles have diverse shell colors but any change in the current color of your pet’s shell, to silver, may make you worry about the animal and its overall well-being.
Here is why this is happening with your reptile:
Shedding:
The reason why your turtle’s shell is turning silver is because the animal’s scutes are shedding. Like many other reptiles, turtles shed, they shed the scutes of their shell.
The scutes are replaced as the turtle grows, old scutes don’t grow but are replaced by new wider scutes and the old ones fall off
When the old scutes are about to fall off air can get trapped between the old scutes and the new scutes and water can get into this area as well.
The silver that you see on the shell, when light refracts on the shell, happens because there is trapped water under the old scutes.
What to do:
This is perfectly normal and isn’t something that you should worry about, the shell color will go back to normal once the old scutes have fallen off and the new ones are visible.
Allow the scutes to shed in their own time, don’t try to peel them off, peeling them will only cause bleeding, and tissue damage and will be very painful to the turtle
You can use a soft toothbrush to gently rub on the scutes to encourage them to fall off.
Also, remember to remove the shed scutes from your pet’s tank once they fall off, if you don’t remove them then they will get stuck in the filter.
If you enjoyed this article then you may also be interested in other turtle/tortoise related articles. Here are some articles that you may be interested in: Why Is My Turtle’s Shell Turning Pink?, Why Is The Bottom Of My Turtle’s Shell Pink?, Why Is My Turtle’s Shell Turning Gold?, Why Is My Turtle’s Skin Turning Pink?
