General Care Discussion :: Gary the Turtle

[Seamus]

Hi there.
So, my roommates and I have this turtle. "Gary the Turtle" was dumped on us by a roommate after moving out 2 years ago. None of us had any idea how to take care of it, as he never really did; so we just kept doing what he was doing, which was not much. So we have been taking care of Gary to the best of our knowledge for two years or so now.

Gary the Turtle lives out her life in a huge tank (I think its 125 gallon, its 6 feet long). The tank is just about full of water and awesome filtration. She lives with some kind of sucker fish, who does all the cleaning for us. Gary has a little shelf to "chill" on; it is directly below his light. All we really have to do is feed him and fill the tank up every now & then.

I've been reading a bit about care for these turtles and I wonder if we are taking good care of our awesome turtle.

First off, the heating issue. We live at 10,200 feat above sea level in the Colorado Rockies, it gets pretty cold, especially in the winter. To make matters worse, we don't use any electric heat; just the wood burning stove. I doubt that Gary's tank has been above 60-65 since last November, not to mention how low.

Next, I wonder if we are feeding her correctly. Gary will not eat veggies at all. She will not eat anything that isn't easily recognizable as meat. Her favorite is night-crawlers or maybe steak trimmings. But we also give her feeder gold fish, cold-cuts, whatever other meat leftover that is laying around. One of our roommates bought a bunch of nice fish and a few little crabs only to find them going missing one by one. ha.

We all really love having Gary around. She makes a great, low maintenance pet, and my roommates and I want her to be around as long as possible.

[Seamus]

Thanks for reading my post! Any questions and/or suggestions are welcome. I'm hoping to put up some pictures soon of our awesome turtle and her little ecosystem in the Rockies.

[Lantic]

Welcome! First off you will have to buy a heater and a UVB to go along with the other light.( i'm assuming its a UVA ) Second, You may need to start introducing vegatables if you want her around longer. Try soaking the veggies in Tuna. It helps to entice eating. How often do you feed her?

[megcornell]

Welcome to the site.
Gary has quite a tank, she's lucky!

However, her diet could use some tweaking as you might have figured out .
Take a look at the diet and nutrition sticky notes to see what vegetables you should be introducing to her. The main staples of her diet should be pellets every other day and vegetables daily. High protein foods like feeder fish should only be a rare treat.

Also, you're correct to assume her temperatures are off. The good news is that with such a large tank I imagine things stay relatively consistent temp. wise. Do you have a thermometer so you can figure out the current water temp? If not pick up one and pick up a good submersible water heater as well. With a tank your size, you may want two- one at each end to heat things evenly. Adult turtles need water temps around 75F.

You didn't mention what you had for lighting. With your tank you could easily use an MVB bulb which gives off both UVA and UVB light, or you could have a separate bulb for each. It's important to have the basking spot about 10F warmer so Gary is enticed to come out and bask. Also, can she completely dry off on the basking ledge? She'll need to be able to dry the top and bottom of her shell to keep it healthy.

Other than that be sure and post pictures!

[Seamus]

Thanks for the suggestions. I like that tuna idea, it might work. Gary won't eat pellets, we've tried many times, maybe we could hid them in some cold cuts or something.

I think I'm going to grab a good bulb and a thermometer for her this weekend while I'm in Denver.

As for the water temps, what is the harm in it being low? She seems to be healthy and shes been in our cold house for over 2 years. I looked at the tank a bit better and there is some kind of heater in one of the corners, but there's still no way that its anywhere near 75F.

[BullDog]

To add to above, cold cuts are not a good choice for turtles. They are full of fat, salt and preservatives. For protein, (besides pellets), you want to stick with lean feeder fish like minnows or guppies, lean, cooked fish, boiled white chicken meat, or cooked egg white.

For the temperature, 60-65 is a dangerous temperature, because the turtle starts to slow down for hibernation (brumation). Its whole metabolism slows down, and it doesn't feel a strong urge to eat, yet it's not cold enough to hibernate. So it kind of gets stuck in limbo, where it's not eating, yet still using energy.

[Bascomb]

Sea-mo -- Meg-Mod is correct on the pellets. They are well balanced and you have to wait them out when they are pickey. Stick to the basics with the water and basking temps. Water at 75 to 77, basking at 90 to 91 degrees with UVB lighting is good. This is a good starting point. There is a lot more! b.