Turtle care discussion! :D

Heya - PurpleGummy had some turtle questions that were too large for twitter, so I thought this was an ok place to discuss!

Ask away!

Hey, well the question i was going to ask was, If sink water harms the turtles, cause i dont fill their aquariums with that water, i do with drinking clean water just in case, the sink water is the one you bath with and stuff..

It depends on the water in your area - if the water processing plant near you puts chloramines into the water, these can be harmful for your turtle. Usually tap water does contain chlorine which can irritate your turtle's skin and eyes.

You can read about that here: page on dechlorinators

You can fill up buckets/bottles of water and let them sit overnight. The chlorine in your tap water will then evaporate out of the
water by the time you use it for your turtle tank. This won't
neutralize any chloramines or metal deposits in your water, though!

The easiest way to ensure that the water is good for your turtle is to use a dechlorinator on your tap water! :-) This will remove chlorine and chloramines from your tap water and you can find ones also neutralize any heavy mineral/metal deposits that may be in your tap water at the same time.

I emailed my local water processing plant to ask if they used chloramines to help treat the water in our area and they don't, so I don't have to worry about those ^_^ you might not either! You could do the same thing and email yours, if you wanted.

Hope that helps!

Thanks! That helped a lot!! , also about a basking area, ive been to over 4 pet stores and havent found any basking docks for turtles, what can i use? Ive been searching all over the net an yt but cant get to good ones, any ideas?

Are you in the US? If so, you might be able to order some on ebay or from pet sites online. I'll try to find some links for you ^_^

Nope Im Not On The U.S.A and ive considered Amazon and Ebay but my parents dont like to order online a lot xD i had rocks for them to bask but for it to be dry water needed to be shallow so it was pretty hard :/ ^^

The most commonly used ones are these two brands -

Zoomed Turtle Docks - they come in four sizes. The small one might work for you for the first year or more.

The other one is the turtle ramp. They are really sturdy as well and have a few sizes.

Looks like that website will deliver to where you are, but would require air delivery (was reading on their shipping info page).

Or:

Some people make their own out of stuff called egg crate - if you google it you might find some pictures. I think it's commonly used in lighting. It's like a plastic grid that you can cut and fit to your own needs. Other people like to use bark logs that you can find in petstores - you can drill holes in those and then use zip ties to get them to stay in one spot in your tank.

Thanks for that!! Any other tips :3 ? This is really helpful

This thread on those turtle forums has different pictures of basking set ups.

Some of the last ones are called above tank basking areas - they allow you to fill up your tank completely to make the most use of the water/swimming area and then the turtles can climb up a ramp to a basking box on top of the tank. If you have cats or dogs, not the best idea unless you make it very cat proof! Lol

I hope that helps some! Let me know if I can answer any more questions (any at all) and I'll do my best to try and help :-)

Oh this thread has some info as well! Those forums are really my turtle go-to if I ever have any problems. They've taught me all I know about turtle care! :-)

Before, the water in my tank wasnt as deep, it was kind of shallow because i didnt have a good basking area, i was wondering if deep water makes them bask more? Because i think that they will get tired of swimming? Thats just a suposition, is that true?

Hatchlings do just fine in deeper water - you just have to make sure you provide things like fake plants around the tank for them to rest on if they get tired.

It's also good to have something that's about half the height of the water line (like a log or an ornament) that they can rest on and then swim back to the surface. Their lungs aren't as developed as an adult turtle so sometimes they will get tired and need to surface for air sooner than and adult would.

I had my turtle in about 12 inches of water when I first got him and then had stuff in the tank for him to perch on when he was tired and he did just fine ^_^

If your turtles are used to being in shallow water and you want to give them more swimming space by adding water, it's best to do it gradually a bit at a time over a few days or a week.

You just slowly add water each day and before you know it they're in deeper water! :-)

Deeper water does not really make them bask more - basking is all about temperatures. You have to have your basking area 10 degrees F warmer than your water or they won't want to bask. So if your water is 78 or 80F, your basking area should be 88-90F. For hatchlings I would suggest you keep your water at 80F and have your basking area at 90F for optimum basking enticement lol.

Can I ask where your tank is in your house? Some turtles take weeks to bask in front of their owners - very shy turtles may only bask when nobody is around. If you keep your tank in an area that gets a lot of foot traffic in your house they may have not gotten completely used to you yet. It will definitely happen though - my turtle is happy to bask while I'm in the lounge or the kitchen behind him and as long as I don't make any sudden movements toward him he'll sit there for hours.

Well My tank was in my room, as you know, it broke, meanwhile we have them in this kind of mini plastic aquarium in which we bought them, it has a platform for them to bask, a little bridge, they get up there a lot now, ^^ Im planning on buying a tank sometime this week, any suggestions?

The bigger tank you can afford, the better.

Ideally you'd want two tanks because turtles do much better by themselves than with another turtle in their tank. One almost always becomes aggressive towards the other one. If you do intend on keeping them in the same tank, try to feed them separately to ensure they're both getting the same amount of food.

Bigger tanks are better because turtles need a lot of room. If you can get a bigger tank now, you won't have to upgrade as fast because they can grow into it.

I have a 75 gallon tank for my turtle and when he's fully grown I may need to get a bigger one, or perhaps use an above the tank basking area to make full use of the 75 gallons of water. Luckily he's only about 18 months old right now.

Since you have two turtles, you will need double the room for them when they grow!

Please read the Tank Size portion of this page for more info.

I always take them out to feed them into a separate container Im not sure if i can get a tank at the moment but ill ask my dad if he can give me his office one, which has nothing in it, im just not sure if its the right one because its more for fish like i mean its huge, but it has like this caves and plastic anemonae and this big wooden log stiking out from the center...

Between my friend has a turtle and its shell is like decolorated in some parts (shell) and the place that is like the middle of the shell that line from beggining to end is like it has been flattened xD

What kind of turtle is that? xD

How big is your dad's office tank? Can you remove the decorations?

Can I feed them Apple?

Apple isn't a very good food to feed them because it's very high in sugar & they don't digest sugar very well.

Some good things to feed them are:

Leafy green lettuce (not iceberg lettuce though - it has almost no nutritional content)
Carrots
Zuccini
Bell Peppers (not spicy kind lol)

Check out this page - there's TONS of good info on it!

My turtle has blueberries sometimes as a treat - maybe once a month! You could probably feed them a tiny, tiny bit of apple every once in a while as a treat only.

Younger turtles may take some time to eat veggies, but you want them to like them by the time they get older because older turtles' diets should consist of 75% veggies and 25% protein (snails, pellets, fish, etc)

rofl is this like when you were saying turtles are sumo wrestlers on minimonos lol

Nice info Manx,, you must know loads about turtles xD