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I am having a lot of trouble getting rid of all the turtle poo that sinks to the bottom of my tank. I have a 4 inch RES. He lives in a 40 gallon breeder filled up about 3/4 of the way up with water. It has a Fluval 205 Canister Filter w/ a polishing bad, carbon packs, & biomax rings in the compartments. I also have a Fluval Surface Skimmer added on to keep the surface clean. My water is crystal clear, but I have trouble with a ton of poop laying on the bottom of the tank. I only have a few large river rocks in there along with a grass patch that he loves to poop in also. I clean the tank frequently and do a partial change once a week. Even with that along with netting out a lot of the large pieces of poop, there is still a ton at the bottom of my tank and quite frankly, it just looks disgusting. I even vacuum the poo out with a battery powered EHEIM Vacuum, but it still just isn't enough. He swims around in it and its always floating around, its just gross! Can someone help me out with this issue as I just don't know what to do. Aside from that, everything else is perfect, just this dang poop!!!!

PLEASE ADVISE!!!

THANKS.

-Jon-

I don't think the Fluval Surface Skimmer works well with turtles... it doesn't take much to throw it off.

Anyway, if your turtle gets at the poop, then it could be a real mess. There's really no secret to clean it up, you just need lots of good nets. It will also make it easier to take your turtle out of the tank when you have to clean up.

You should invite Miss Tee to come over and visit your tank. It would be clean as a whistle in 20 minutes!

HaHa and Rocky can join her.

Who are Miss Tee and Rocky?

I'd love to know a way to keep my tank a bit cleaner

Those are their turtles

How would their turtles make the tank cleaner?

By eating the poop . Mines just sniffs her's and then *politely* kicks it by her rock, so the filter can deal with it. Lol

How about a powerhead at the bottom to increase water movement. The poop would be forced up into the water column and dealt with by the canister filter. Also a stronger canister filter would help. A 205 is a way undersized for a 40 gallon turtle tank.Divide the filters advertised rating by 3 when sizing for a turtle environment. A filter rated for 40 gallons will handle about 13-15 "turtle gallons".

If you have detritus sitting at the bottom of your tank, I bet your ammonia readings are also very high. The larger filter will have more water circulation to help suck in more waste along the bottom and will have more area for bio filtration to get those ammonia levels back under control. Turtles produce MUCH more bioload than a tank full of community fish... hence the 3x filter size rule of thumb above for turtles.

You can do a hydor koralia power head near the bottom of your tank. Maybe only run it for an hour or so each day (timer) just to force any settled detritus up into the water column for your filter to grab.

Consider getting sand also to replace the rocks so it can't get trapped as easily

sflemin2 wrote:Consider getting sand also to replace the rocks so it can't get trapped as easily

+1

We feed my larger turtle in a separate container, and, leave her there for a little while to poop in the container. After she's done, back into her tank she goes. 98% poop free tank.

Sand Would help the poop settle on the bottom and you can easily vacuum it up with a gravel cleaner. Ranger eats his poop for some gross reason, but it does keep the tank cleaner haha.

It may sound funny, but I use a turkey baster to get the dookie out of the tank.

Or, sometimes I use a small fishnet. The baster works pretty well though.

I use a turkey baster sometimes, though it seems like once it softens of a little my canister filter is able to suck it up.