Habitat - Indoor :: Filter Question

[IslandTribe408]

Hi everyone I'm brand new here. Me and my wife have a Red Eared Slider and we have some questions about the tank and filtration.

So we just bought a new hob filter (SeaChem Tidal 110) for our 20gal tank. I bought a chemical filter media which is the activated carbon, and a bio media which is ceramic rings, plus the media that came with the filter. I know that about once or twice a week we should syphon out about 20 - 50% of the water and replace.

So ultimately my question is why is the water still getting murky? We change out the water, and have a great filter. We've had the new filter for just a few days and it was working great til yesterday which was probably the 4th day we've had the filter. We upgraded from a TopFin Silentstream PF20. Ive read that hob filters aren't the best for turtles but I figured since this is a 110g filter and only a 20g tank that there should be no problems with clean water.

If anyone could give advice on this please share with us.
Much appreciated.

Regards
Nik and Terina

[steve]

Hi, welcome to the forum. How big is your turtle? Either your tank filtration is cycling or your turtle is producing more water than the filtration can handle.

[IslandTribe408]

Hi, welcome to the forum. How big is your turtle? Either your tank filtration is cycling or your turtle is producing more water than the filtration can handle.

Thanks for the response Steve.
My turtle (shell length) is 5inches.

[steve]

I think the issue might be a combination of both problems. A 5 inch turtle would roughly need a 50 gallon tank or greater. Is your turtle a male or female? If you do get a larger tank, you can do fewer water changes. The carbon will need to be replaced every 4-6 weeks.

[IslandTribe408]

A 50 gallon sounds nice. We're planning on getting a 50 or 55 gallon acrylic soon.

We still dont know if our Slider is a boy or girl yet. We got him/her from my wife's friend a few months ago and they didn't know jack about turtles. Our knowledge on them is limited as well but we've been researching about em. We think it's a female though, the back feet are a lil bigger then the front and her tail isn't as big as the male turtles we saw online. Any chance you could help with that too?

I tried to post pics from my phone but the KB is too big.

Regards,
Nik and Terina

[steve]

At 5" you should know... if you don't see any male characteristics, then you have a lady In that case, she will probably outgrow a 55 gallon. Acrylics are nice, but are more expensive and can get scratched. You can use them, but keep that in mind when you are deciding what you want. I'm hoping to get an acrylic tank one day too.

You will probably have to use a 3rd party image host, www.imgur.com is pretty good. You can also email them to me.