Urgent Care :: My Turtle Bit my other turtle

[crazyturtle]

Hey everyone,

Don't know what really to do here.. It was feeding time and i put the food in and then out of nowhere my larger turtle (but not by much) bit my smaller turtle on the hand.. And it wasn't even just a snap it was im biting you and not letting go.. After watching my little turtle struggle to get free for about 10 seconds i opened my tank and pulled them both out.. At that point my turtle still wouldn't let go.. He only let go after I started screaming at him.. my little turtle was really shaken up.. after my bigger turtle let go i had my little turtle in my other hand and he was just trying to get away as fast as he can.. which is unlike him as goes to me handling him..

I don't think my little turtles hand is hurt for he is swimming and seems to be fine but he is a little hyper right now in the tank.. but that didn't stop him from eating the food..

right now my bigger turtle is in my water pale.. I yelled at him and called him bad for while but for some reason i don't think he got the message.. he even had the nerve to open his mouth to me.. though he never snapped at me.. i don't think he is that stupid..

What am i suppose to do now.. Should i put them back together? If i can't i'm going to have to get rid of one of them.. someone please offer me some advice..

oh yea, I have noticed lately they have been doing the fluttering hand dance with each other.. and i know that isn't good. so i'm guessing
something is going on..

my one turtle is over 4 inches

my little turtle is under 4 inches..

[megcornell]

You absolutely need to keep them separated. If that means re-homing one then until you can find a home you need to set up a tupperware bin or some other interim home.
Once aggression starts in turtles it won't stop. You're lucky things didn't turn out worse. Keep an eye on the smaller one's foot and make sure it doesn't get infected.

[crazyturtle]

Deep down inside I kinda new that was going to be the case but was hoping someone here would tell me different.. This just sucks so much.. i love both of them.. My bigger turtle is the more friendly one towards people.. but he also has somewhat of a attitude.. I believe the bigger is a female and the smaller one is a mail but i never really looked to deep into that matter.

My little guy is a little sketchy.. he freaks with sudden moves towards the thank but but has his own personality that makes him so lovable..

my bigger turtle right now will not start making noice against the bucket.. He really doesn't like it there.. but he started the fight so he is the one to be punished..

[crazyturtle]

I was doing research on aggression just now and cam across this...

"In contrast, courtship by some aquatic turtles is quite graceful and intricate. A male may swim around or swim backward in front of a receptive female, fluttering and vibrating his foreclaws against her head and neck. Following this, copulation will occur."

this is what I have been seeing recently.. my turtles have been doing just this.. At first i thought is was a warning.. like get out of my space.. but now i am really confused.. If my larger one is female and my smaller one is male and they have been doing a mating dance... then why would the larger one bite the smaller one.

[packfan1]

I can sympathize with how you feel as I have been going through this aggression for some time now. We had bought three turtles about four months ago and shortly afterwards the aggression started. Mainly bites on the back of the neck and toes. Recently one had such bite marks as to cause bleeding. I now understand the issues with this problem and often leave comments and suggestions to others with more than one turtle in a tank. You have few options. One is to re-home one and only have one. Two is too get a very large tank, 100+ gallons and hope it stops; reason is that if it is very large they will not see as much and it "may" stop or prevent the aggression. Third is to purchase another tank and set it up and seperate the two.
Sorry you are going through this be act sooner than later to avoid serious injury or death to your turtle.

[TheComputerGremlin]

crazyturtle, when the female tires of the male's attempts, she will often become aggressive towards the male. However, based on your turtles' sizes, they should not yet be sexually mature. It is likely that whatever gender they are, they are being aggressive and need to be separated immediately. Sorry!

[megcornell]

In the wild, males and females can come together to court each other and mate and then go to their separate corners of the pond. In a tank, the male is always in the female's face, fluttering and attempting to mate. This quickly annoys her, and the larger female attacks as that's her only course of action.
A tank isn't the wild, behavior patterns are changed due to space constraints, and the aggression level of RES usually means they have to live individually.

[momoandappa]

my turtals also do this... i got my turtals a few weeks ago in china town and they r only a 2 inches big but i got them i big new tank but the boy one is allways trying to i think mate with the girl turtle by flutterring its fingers but my girl turtle keeps rejecting him and then he starts to bit her....expecially when feeding comes however that is another problem... ever sence my boy turtle started to bite and attempt to mate with the girl one the girl wont eat and she hasnt eaten in two days and im starten to freak out. what should i do?!

[untsmurf]

You should start your own thread, you'll get more responses that way. But fyi, fluttering is not always a sign of a turtle wanting to mate, especially since they are only 2 inches. It sounds more like aggression caused be territoriality. The other sign that it's aggression is that it happens during feeding time. And there's no way to sex your turtles at that age, you might have two males or two females.

You should either get them a bigger tank and separate it so they won't have access to one another or you can buy them a second tank so each can have his own tank. Until you can do that, you need to feed them separately in order to ensure that the turtles don't starve. The biting and the aggressive behavior can kill the submissive turtle. Your aggressive turtle could give him a deadly bite or could starve him to death.

Aggressive behavior is something that doesn't go away with age, it gets worse. So you need to take care of this now before it gets worse.