Anyone got turtles? Need advice!

[mylittlezoo]

My husband has two Yellow Bellied sliders in a tank - we're about to upgrade to a 55gallon tank for them, as they've grown gigantic.

However - their tank smells awful, no matter how often we clean it, and the filter never seems good enough.

What's the best filter available and does anyone have any advice on the best way to keep them clean and healthy?

I confess I know NOTHING about turtles, we've had them for over a year now and they've quadrupled in size and suddenly seem to need a whole lot more attention....!! But they're so cute and so much fun, I want them to carry on growing and looking great!

 

[Livinzoo]

Your probably overfeeding a bit. Turtles will grow alot quicker when fed excess food. And the more food they eat the more waste they produce. Upgradeing their tank is a great idea. As far as a filter I really like the canister filters. Eheim or Fluval would be some of the best. They have a sponge that catches the particulate matter and rinseing that out often will help alot with the waste. Also the more area for bacteria to grow the better. So small gravel at the bottom of the tank and something like seachems matrix in part of your filter.

Other than that turtles are very messy. Live plants will help too but the turtles will eat them also.

 

[mylittlezoo]

My husband feeds and I suspect he does overfeed, so I'll mention it to him!

We have a Fluval filter, it just doesnt seem 'man' enough! The gravel at the bottom of the tank is big gravel, I'll have to put extra in for the new tank, so I'll get the smaller kind.

We tried live plants.... they ate them!!!

What's the seachems matrix?

 

[Hornetkc5]

Ok when feeding the best is to have a seperate bowl to feed them in, so the waste does not remain in the tank. let em hang out in that bowl or smaller tank for the remaining hour so their waste is in that bowl and can be thrown out. then do half tank changes everyother week seem to help us out a lot! also we feed ours every other day!

 

[mylittlezoo]

We have a 50gallon tank to put them in, that will be half full of water with a floating log. Should we build up one end with rocks, so they have a stable area to climb up onto to feed from? Currently, we just put food on the floating log, which doesnt seem to be working so well.

 

[pixie74943]

I've seen 2 styles of turtle keeping. My brother keeps his turtles in a nice big heated tank, has a light on about 6 hours a day (we toned it down from 10) and feeds them whitebait and about 4 frozen cubes a day (He has two) they have doubled in size.

My boyfriend recently moved house and they found a turtle in a bricked in bathtub out the back, with a goldfish, and a rock. It gets a cube a day, and occasionally they throw in a turtle neutralizer block to keep the pH levels okay.

Needless to say my brothers turtles are HUGE and smelly and bitey. Spud (the bf's turtle) is a bit slow and sleepy but perfectly healthy and there is NO smell to his bathtub.


end point... turtles are cold blooded and will grow faster if they are in warm water. which means they will have to eat more. and poop more. and cost more. and smell more.

 

[Ferngully]

I second Hornet's advice. This method has worked really well for us. We also inspect his body and shell during the changes for any signs of a problem.

Yes they will eat the plants, this is why we have a small pond filled with water hyacinth that propagate very quickly and minnow type fish, for the turtle as well as the ducks.

We recently moved our big boy outdoors to a preformed pond (still in the process of landscaping it). He was getting too big for his 55 gal. tank. We have 1 red ear slider who is about 6 years old. His name is Jerry. He is a nice big happy fellow who gets excited when he sees someone approach him. He wants picked up. lol, a puppy turtle.

Be careful with too small of gravel, I have read that they can accidentaly injest it. We use river rock as our substrate. Smooth stones so he doesnt scrape or cut his shell.

Just remember that turtles can grow to the size of a dinner plate when planning the next size up enclosure.

Have fun with yours, we enjoy watching ours.

 

[mylittlezoo]

These guys are monsters, but they are NOT friendly. It gets real cold here in the winter, so they have to be in from now on whatever, but I hope this summer to wear hubby down and get him to build them a nice pond to spend the summer in. What kind of plants / fish etc should I put in it? What kind of pond and filtration is best?

 

[McCord6]

I have a slider and she is still tiny. We had a problem with stinky tanks too, sliders are not easy to clean after. You need to have 2 parts in the tank, the water and the rocky (land). You dont need to drop food in the water to feed them. I put a small clear plastic bowl, looks like a scientist test tray, fill it with water and put at least 5 tablets of feed in there a day. It works great and keeps their swim area clean. My vet is the one that adviced this.

DO NOT REPREAT THE SAME MISTAKE I DID! DO NOT PUT ANY TYPE OF FISH THAT IS ABOUT THE SAME SIZE OR SMALLER IN WITH THEM!!!!!!!!! I LOST MY PRICE BLACK TIP GOLD FISH CUZ OF THIS LIL GUY!

 

[Bec]

I don't know about the filters and stuff you should use, but definitely have somewhere in the tank where they can get out of the water and completely dry. They will also need to bask under a UBV lamp.