General Care Discussion :: Agression Problems

[Tebryn]

I have two RES turtles a male, and a female. The Female is aprox 8inchs and the male about 6inchs, roughly three years old. I've had my turtles just over a year now. At first they were rather tame, no real issues aside from eating my fish, which was expected. Last fall, I built an indoor pond for them 80gallons, with a nice ramp and a large basking area with a wood framed acrylic border to prevent escape. This was to get them out of my 55 gallon aquarium due to the larger female attacking the male after his mating attempts. They were fine for a couple days in the new bigger home, but then the attacks started again. Eventually she injured one of his hind feet bad, and I had to put him back into the aquarium, since she is now too heavy for the dock in the aquarium.

A few months have passed and he has eaten basically all my fish, and now I'd like to sell the aquarium, to downsize, so I just have the pond. I would like to re-introduce him to the pond setup, as it is very nice and it is a shame that she is the only one enjoying it. Does anyone have any advice as to how I could go about this and possibly have them get along. Alternatively I would consider seeing if I could find someone to trade one of my turtles with. Would it be better to trade the male and get a second female or the other way around? I just don't want to end up in a situation again where one of them nearly kills the other.

[Linus]

Turtles are agressive, and RES are really aggressive. She's just going to keep attacking him. Also, your pond is too small. 10 Gallons of water for every 1" of turtle. If they even somehow weren't aggressive towards each other, you would need about a 200 gallon pond.

[steve]

Since females aren't usually the aggressor, you might be better keeping her away from other females too.

[hill]

Yes, sliders are generally aggressive but it may help to put them in a larger tank with some hidding places. In not you may have to get another aquarium or get rid of one of them.

[theartbook35]

Don't re-introduce them. It's not worth the injuries. Your turtles obviously don't want to share space, and the only reason why your male has any interest in the female is to breed.

Part of the reason why they did not get along was likely due to the fact that you had two very large turtles in an 80 gallon pond. Their minimum should be a 140 gallon, based on the ten gallon rule, however, I don't think they will get along even with that. There are folks here who have placed a male & female pair in a pond with six feet of space between them and they STILL fought with each other.

As much as my two females are comfortable with each other, even I am considering separating them. I can fit two smaller tanks in my apartment, but right now, if I could fit it and afford it, I'd put them both in a 250 to 300 gallon. Hurricane seems to be pretty good about leaving Typhoon alone, and Typhoon is pretty tolerant, but Typhoon also has a HUGE temper if she is pushed too much, and I would rather not wait for the day when she gets so mad that she hurts Hurricane. You should see how aggressive Typhoon is with my mother, she's normally very calm and docile with me, but you see her try to bite my mom and she becomes a whole other turtle.