General Care Discussion :: I am novice wit turtles

[RamonaJ]

Thank you so much how did you do this. This looks good. And I know they need more water. But imagine this. When I got them they were sitting beside each other in that small 10 gallon tank with only 2 gallons of distilled water. They were turning around and around because there was not other space to go and they were just walking around and around since the last 3 years. After I bought that 50 gallon tank I put these 12 gallons of water in which you can see here. It needed them 2 hours to find out that they can swim. They were like in shock. They were standing on there tip toes and tried to walk like humans. That was really pittyful to look at. My husband accused me of being cruel he said I was drowning them. When he saw that they did not drown but swim he meant, that I could not put more water in otherwise they really would drown. So I left it like it is right now. I have them since one week. I will try to put 16 gallon in next time I clean them. I have to clean them every other day and that is horrible. I will have to get me a heater and filter real quick to save me some stress.

[mikee]

Ram-j -- Your tank is borderline in size: slider turtles need at least 10 gallons per inch of turtle. Your filter should be at least capable of pumping 5 times the amount of water you have in the tank. Water temp should be 75 to 78 degrees and the basking temp should be around 90 to 91 degrees with uva and uvb rays on a good basking area. Turtle husbandry is not cheap and takes a lot of work. Good Luck!! m.

[TurtleLover_S&B]

Your welcome!

[RamonaJ]

Hello Mikee thanks for cheering me up with the money part I knew that taking care of aquatic turtles is not cheap. A cousin in Switzerland has two of those as big as a dinnerplate. He has a built in the wall tank in his appartment. That tank is 10 feet long and 5 feet high. His brother and him need a whole day to clean it up. He also has always a swarm of orange fishes in it, but, he said the turtles eat some of them and he has to buy new fishes all the time .
As I mentioned before I would not have bought this kind of animal because money is tight, however, I have a melting heart when I see animals suffer and that is the reason I took them over. I will eventually end up once next year buying a 125 gallon tank. I already looked at them. They come with a stand and the turtles would have a field day swimming in it.
I have them since one week, so give me a little more time and these turtles will live in paradise.
Fortunately our money situation will change in the near future since I am working on a bachelor's degree in IT. Once I graduate my work situation will be much better and also the turtles I promise.
I bought them a full picture for the background, and put more water in the tank, so that foto above is already outdated. The funny part is, that picture is a reef with a few fishes. These crazy turtles tried to bite the fishes which are on the picture. This made me laughing.

[RamonaJ]

Hello all you friendly people answering all my questions and cheering me up. I have another question about the turtles. I got two boxes of dry food for them. They both called ReptoMin. One has baby shrimp and krill and some green little sticks. The other one has green floating sticks.
My question is; can I feed them those real shrimps as I buy them to make a shrimp coctail for us? I saw in the foto gallery that somebody fed one of those to his turtles by hand. I just wonder if they get sick or not. And I heard about feeding them some kind of worms. Does anybody know what these worms are called? I had once fishes in Switzerland and I fed them some worms they were frozen in flat blocks like a chocolate bar. Those worms were bloody once I thawed them up. Is this the same kind the turtles would eat, and if yes, where do I get those?

[Daniel3507]

you should only feed small shrimp and worms about once a month max. im not real sure if shrimp we eat is good for turtles though. the main part of the diet should be pellets (little green sticks). the nutrition section of the main site will be able to tell you more about stuff like this.

[SpotsMama]

The frozen worms you got in Switzerland sound like bloodworms. We can get them around here at pet stores like Petco and Petsmart

And I feed my turtle an occasional whole fresh (or thawed out frozen) shrimp. It's his very favorite thing in the world. He eats shrimp so fast I'm afraid he might choke, so I always cut it up in pieces for him. He only gets one of these several times a year on special occasions.