Why is Turbo acting like this? *SOLVED*

[BrainGirl]

***I figured out the problem before I managed to post this but thought I'd post it anyway to serve as a suggestion to anyone else having this problem. When I got to the last line about not seeing him on his wheel I had a brainstorm and checked. Sure enough, he'd kicked grit into the space between the stand and the spindle and it couldn't spin freely. I bet you anything he'll stop pacing now

First off, I very rarely see the little guy. He seldom comes out before midnight so generally if I want to see him I have to stay up very late and hang out in the dark until I hear him moving around, then I flick the light on. The last couple of times I've seen him though he's taken to this weird repetitive pacing at one of the narrow ends of the tank. He zips back and forth and at each end he does this little jump up and kind of twists back in a semi-flip to head back the other way.

His tank is 36" long by 16" wide and he only exhibits this behaviour along the short sides. All I can figure is that it's because those ends have only one terrain, whereas if he were to pace the long sides he would have to scramble over two different terrains and over the barrier in the middle. His tank is half deep paper-based substrate for burrowing and half sand with a "rock" cave system in the middle. He has a flying saucer but I haven't seen him use it lately.

[DrKMcK]

Braingirl...Brainstorm...how very appropriate! He was probably pacing and saying, "My wheel won't work, my wheel won't work. Whatta I do???". But you came to the rescue BG. Good thinking!

[Skeever]

Wow. Great how he adapted and got his running in anyways......unless as Dr K suggests he was just pacing back and forth wondering why his prayers to you were being ignored......"Please, please fix my wheel....I'll never eat in it again!"

[BrainGirl]

LOL you're probably right, he was trying to get my attention and I, big stupid bumbling hooman that I am, just didn't get it Ah well, it's fixed now!

Holy schmoly though, I struggled to get the grit out of the post and couldn't get the two pieces apart! Turns out the new saucers are built differently from the old. They used to have a nice metal post with smooth edges and a plastic sleeve that just fit over it to make a nice, tight fit; now it's a 4-part plastic post that the sleeve snaps onto. Cheap design that's not going to last very long even without having sand in there grinding it to dust.

And dust there was! I had to clean out loads of white plastic dust before I added some new petroleum jelly and put it back together. I've also decided to place it on the burrowing half of his tank rather than the sand half. I think I'm going to have to build a platform to place it on because from experience I'm sure it will gradually get buried with the little guy's activities. At least he won't be able to kick sand at it on that side!