Turtles!

If you can catch live flies, they love it. As they grow, they will need more and more room. They can snap at you, so watch the fingers…

And whatever you do, once they get bigger, if you put them outside, make sure you cover the container at night! I found out the hard way racoons eat turtles…

Oh no!! If you can, please report this guy selling them. What he was doing is illegal, and immoral.

http://exoticpets.about.com/od/reptilesturtles/a/turtlesales.htm

Not only are they a health risk, but many of these turtles are pulled out of the wild. Sadly over 95% of them die before they are a year old… which is very depressing considering that they should live for at least 20 years! They are often sold with the misinformation that they can be kept in small bowls or tanks and that they will only grow to the size of the tank or bowl, which is false and will end up with a sick or dead turtle.

These guys need a fairly large tank set up (for an adult, a minimum of a 40 gallon long- double that for two turtles) with water deep enough to dive into, and a land area for basking. Their water needs to be kept clean, which is no easy task, and a filtration setup is highly recommended. They will need a heat source such as a basking lamp, and UV lighting either via natural sunlight each day (this cannot be through a window) or a fluorescent UV bulb.

They should ideally be fed fresh foods, supplemented with the pellets (the pellets alone will often lead to severe malnutrition). They can get a bit expensive to feed.

Here is some information on their care and diet:

http://www.wnyherp.org/care-sheets/turtles/painted-turtle.php

http://www.amphibiancare.com/frogs/caresheets/juvenileaquaticturtle.html

http://animal-world.com/encyclo/reptiles/turtles/WesternPaintedTurtle.php

I worked in pet stores for many years and I always tried to talk people out of owning aquatic turtles. They are expensive to set up properly and take a lot of work (weekly water changes, even with a good filter, are a must for example) to keep clean, especially around children where there is a high risk of salmonella.

That said, if you can invest and care for the turtles properly they will be very interesting pets to watch.

What Jen said….turtles are a lot of work. And a long term commitment. I just helped re-home two red eared sliders. The owners had had them for over 10 years and Lucy and Ethel were outgrowing a 150 gallon tank. The owners were getting on in years and just couldn’t physically keep up with them anymore. Fortunately I know someone whose dad had a whole pond for turtles and he took them.

Last year I went to the Lights Spectacular at the Bronx Zoo just before Christmas. (By the way, anyone who gets a chance to go I highly recommend it) A friend and I went into the reptile house and someone had left a red eared slider in a traveling cage in front of the exhibit. We stayed with the turtle until a guard amd a keeper came. She told us that people do that all the time with reptiles – just leave them at the zoo. But because the zoo is accredited they can only get their animals from approved sources. Plus there is the whole disease risk. So if they can’t find a home for the animal within 24 hours (and they do keep a list of rescue organizations and people) they have to euthanize the animal. 🙁

Good luck with yours. I hope they do well.

Wow, I haven’t heard of or seen turtles sold in a pet shop since I was a kid. (read this as verrrrry long ago… 😉 ) The risk of salmonella was a big factor in getting them pulled from sales.

Jen makes some very good points in her post, and yes, they are difficult to keep *well* in a tank.

If you do keep them, make sure to wash your hands very well with soap after handling them. That also goes for each time you clean their habitat, too. Salmonella is nothing to sneeze at.

you see box terrapins alot in the woods around here, and I love to pick them up and check them out, but I always put them back where I find them. I’ve never had a pet turtle, but they are awesome creatures. 🙂 After reading all this…I suppose just seeing them occasionally in the wild is probably best. I wouldnt have guessed how difficult to care for they are. It kinda makes me angry at the pet shops….

I had a wild aquatic turtle once. We were out 4x4ing during a very dry spell and nearly ran him over, we stopped and grabbed him. Since we knew there wasn’t water to be had for miles and he was only about 5 inches across we figured his best bet was us.

So we took him home, set up a tank for him with a filter, etc and fed him minnows and feeder goldfish, he ate a lot! We kept him for 2 years, then took him out to a reservor that always had water and turtles like him, and released him. Yes, we did check with wildlife control about releasing him and they determined that since he had come from the same general area, I’d say we were 15 miles from where he was found, and the same species of turtle was healthy and had never been exposed to other turtles it was safe to release him.

I imagine he is still living there happily and has descendants by now.

Turtles are cute, but lots of work, mine went through about 50 fish a week, and those were the bigger ones. The tank would support the fish, so he did his own hunting. We’d just add a new supply once a week. We never fed him commercial food, which I suspect would have made him ill considering what he was used to.

I imagine in the wild they eat tadpoles, water nymphs and other things, but fish was all I had and he was very healthy and was about 6.5 inches long when we let him go.

But I wouldn’t have wanted to keep caring for him, it was a lot of work, and that filter got nasty quick, we changed it daily.

Kyrin