I wanted to add that I am also currently looking to get her a male companion. She lived ith another arger red foot where she was before, and she actually seems quite lonely now. Being social creatures I feel like I should get her a male at the same size as her..is this a good idea?

I don't know much about tortoises, but my daughter got one last year and she was acting very similar to the way yours is. Even had the watery eyes. I was told she was most likely dehydrated. So we increased the humidity, gave her baths every day and cleaned her eyes frequently. About a week or two later, her appetite increased and her eyes cleared up. Now we keep her on cypress mulch, bathe her twice a week and mist daily. And haven't had any issues since. Hope that helps.

What are temperatures like? How dry does the enclosure get?

The watery eyes point toward a humidity problem... In which case, I would recommend covering as much of the top as possible. I've had great success retaining humidity in my leopard tortoise's enclosure by mounting the lights inside and covering the top with a shower curtain to hold in the heat and humidity. You might see about getting a taller tub, or a tall aquarium (a 75 gallon would be a good size to start with) and doing something similar.

The inactivity and lack of appetite suggests it's too cold. Redfoots seem to most often do best when their enclosure is consistently in the mid 80s throughout. Maybe one small basking spot in the low 90s, but it should be noted that many experienced Redfoot keepers forgo the basking spot with great success.

Just some ideas so far... Otherwise, my best suggestions would be to go through some of the higher reputed Redfoot caresheets: http://www.redfoots.com/redfoot.htm comes to mind as a well reputed care sheet, which has brought many people success in raising smooth, healthy Redfoots. I would also highly recommend posting this question over on http://tortoiseforum.org. You'll be able to get more, and more in-depth, answers over there. (Not knocking iHerp by any means--iHerp kicks ass--it just seems experienced tortoise keepers, especially redfoot keepers specifically, seem to be a bit few and far between 'round these parts).

Also, regarding getting a male, I would suggest passing on that, at least for now. Aside from the importance of getting your girl back to good health before adding more, having a lone male with a lone female can be trouble. The male will breed her incessantly, stressing her out to no end. Even if you get a female, there can still be bullying issues. Redfoots are most certainly one of the more social tortoise species, but you should still think long and hard before getting a second and be prepared to need a second enclosure entirely in the event they don't get along.

Oh--sorry about the triple post, but forgot one other thing, lol. Regarding substrate, there's a couple options. The one you're thinking of is probably top soil and sand mix (no more than 50% sand by weight). Another is cypress mulch. I have a mix of cypress mulch and eco earth for my leopard, and a sand/eco earth mix for my Russians. Both work very well.

Thanks for all the info, I had a feeling there was something way off. I actually don't even have a lid for her tub, it's wide open and the lamp hangs on one side (its UVA and UVB bulb). The temp under the light gets to about 85 degrees, but when I shut it off at night it drops to about 70, which I know isn't good. Do you really think I should try a tank? I've thought about that, but thoght she would need more floor space than that. All the tubs that have the most floor space are all very short, and the deeper tubs don't have enough floor space. I do mist twice a day, and even mist her. I'll definitely give her the bath every day now. She has a ceramic dish (the bottom disk to a ceramic flower pot) and it's big enough for her to get completely in and splash around if she wanted.

I was looking into a male because I figured I had a few more years before I had to worry about them breeding, but apparently they start younger than I thought. She's a little bigger than a dollar bill. I'll try and fix the husbandry issues asap and then hope her appetite improves. Any other tips would be awesome.

BTW I tried to join tortoiseforum.org and I never recieved the activation letter, and then no one responded to me when I emailed them about it. I'll try it again though I guess....

If it's only getting 85 under the light, and the rest of the tub is cooler, then the temps are probably too low. On the bulb, is it a coil UVB, or a mercury vapor bulb? If it's a coil bulb, those are known to cause serious eye problems, and I would recommend ditching it immediately. If it's an MVB, they need to be pointing straight down (having it at an angle can damage the bulb, and there's been speculation that it may also hurt the torts' eyes to have the UVB coming in at that angle), and need to be 12" away from the tortoise as the UV output is so intense... So that might be contributing...

If you can find a big enough tank, I'd say go for it. One very successful Redfoot (and box turtle) keeper over on TFO (username terryo) uses aquariums religiously indoors. Here's pictures of her two redfoots' enclosures most recently: http://www.tortoiseforum.org/Thread-Solo-s-new-vivarium and http://www.tortoiseforum.org/Thread-Pio-s-new-vivarium Her enclosures are also an example of forgoing a basking light. She uses CHEs to heat, and a straight UVB tube to light.

Anyway, if you think about the floorspace of tubs, it's not much different than bigger tanks. The largest, tall-sided tote, a 45 gallon, is only the floorspace of a 40 gallon Breeder... The largest under bed storage totes, maybe the floorspace of a 75... You can often find bigger tanks pretty inexpensively on Craigslist and the like. I wouldn't go smaller than 75 gallons for yours, but even that size should last at least until you get around to building a larger enclosure. Something like a 100 gallon (the 6 ft long style) may even last until you move to where you can build a full size adult table. Of course, there are other options, but retro-fitting a used big tank would be a quicker, easier way to optimize your redfoot's "grow out" enclosure than most others.

Re: getting a male, the issue wouldn't be your little RF being ready to breed; it would be the stress that a sexable, and therefore sexually mature, male Redfoot would put on your current gal. Male tortoises tend to be very... Exuberant, let's say. They'll incessantly attempt to breed and otherwise dominate any other tortoise in the enclosure, regardless of size, sexual maturity, or even sex. I've seen it plenty with my male Russian tortoises--with 3 males and only 1 female, I often walk in on one of the more dominant males going around, courting and mounting each of the other tortoises in turn regardless of sex. Granted, Redfoots tend to be far less extreme about that sort of thing than Russians, but the same concept applies. Also consider the size of your Redfoot... It's hard to sex a tortoise until it's nearly full grown. For a Redfoot, you'd be looking at as big as 8" SCL before being able to sex accurately. At the size of a dollar bill (what's that, 4-6" IIRC?), she's probably still too small for you to really know for sure whether it's male or female... So that'd be something to keep in mind, too, when thinking about getting a second. I'm not trying to talk you out of a second redfoot, just giving you food for thought to make sure you're considering all points before you do. :)

Hopefully the issues with your account activation get worked out soon. :)