Rex eating the Chinese Algae Eater!!

Two weeks ago I was doing routine tank maintenance. Since it was the first sunday of the month, I did a 100% water change and took the whole set-up apart to scrub everything. In the process, I stupidly broke the water heater and it cracked open. No way was I going to put in a cracked open glass heater in the turtle tank – the turtles might get electrocuted.

So anyway, the turtles still need their tank, so I filled it up with water anyway. To heat it up I turn the ceramic heat lamp on, and to make it quicker, I took a household room heater and pointed it at the turtle tank (it made a lot of noise, but better the water gets warm than the turts freeze).

The water was cold – 50 or 60 degrees, when the ideal red ear slider tank is around 75. I’m guessing the cold water caused the chinese algae eater to slown, slow enough for Rex to be able to kill and eat it. By the time I saw what had happened, Rex had already killed the fish and was already trying to swallow it. I grabbed my camera (which I keep next to the tank) and took some video and pictures.

Note: graphic content follows… The background noise you hear is the room heater blasting at the tank.

(click on the pic to view the video)

In the first video above, Rex is trying to swallow the CAE. It’s too big for him to swallow, that whenever he tries to swallow a little bit more, the fish pops out a bit. He keeps trying and eventually just lets the fish out as he goes to the surface for a breath of air. During most of the video, you can see my other RES, Cinderella, watching from across the tank divider wanting a piece of fish too.

(click on the pic to view the video)

This second video starts with Cinderella trying to reach the dead CAE from under the tank divider (cute!). Rex comes back down from the water surface and tries to eat the CAE again. He’s a lot smarter this time as he starts clawing at it. He manages to gut and skin it, while eating the rest of the fish.

A pic of Rex looking at the skinned CAE.

A pic of the gutted CAE.

(click on the pic to view the video)

This third video has Rex eating the rest of the CAE. He goes up for air again at the end.  My camera’s storage card ran out of memory…

A pic of Rex looking for more fish bits. There are some guts seen in the photo – he doesn’t eat it and I eventually siphon it up.

The lesson in this: always have a back-up heater. Or get one that doesn’t get destroyed so easy. I managed to buy a really good one the day after…

Hope you enjoyed the videos and pictures!

Chinese Algae Eaters and my RESs

The two smaller Chinese Algae Eaters (CAE) disappeared. I was very surprised to discovery this. Based on all the research I did, including this page in Austin’s Turtle Page (a really great resource for turtles) I really expected them to last a real long time in the turtle tank.

CAE’s are good for community tanks when they are young, but they turn territorial when much older. Young CAEs are priced much higher than the medium or larger (older) CAEs. Being price wary, the CAEs I got were medium ones, but one of them was bigger than the others. Figured they wouldn’t be territorial yet and would take a while before they do. Lately, I’ve seen it acting territorial – chasing the feeder goldfish away or trying to suck on them when they get close. I’m guessing it got territorial on the two smaller CAEs and attacked & injured them – then the turtles got the chance to eat them.

Oh well, guess the tank was just too small for the CAE’s. I’ll just get more when I get a bigger tank.

more live food and aquarium mates

I feel like it’s been awhile since I posted about something other than my turts’ size. Here’s an update on their live feeding…

Since the last rosy was eaten, they haven’t eaten any of the 2 remaining goldfish. When November rolled in, I bought them more live food – which I aim to do for them everytime a new month comes in.

I bought them 5 rosy minnows this time. Rex immediately ate one of the fish as I was transferring them to the turtle tank. It was so quick!! After putting 3 or 4 of the fish in the tank, I saw one of them in his mouth with its tail sticking out. It was head first and he was swallowing it whole. I reached for the camera as he was swallowing it, but didn’t manage to get to a photo of the action.

The day after, another minnow was missing, although there’s no way of telling who ate it. The next day yet another minnow disappeared.

When I bought the minnows, I also bought a mystery snail. I figured the turtles might want to try some other food, and if not, then it could help keep the tank clean. The turts have bitten the snail a few times, and even took a chip off the shell, but haven’t managed to eat/kill it yet.

In the meantime the turtles, Cinderella in particular, was getting very aggressive. She was always trying to flutter Rex and would make bite attempts at his claws and face. Given the overly aggressive behavior, I divided the tank to avoid any of the turtles from drawing blood and missing eyes and such. Dividing the tank was a bit difficult since I also divided the basking area, which is a Zilla corner basking platform. I’ll post pics of the divided tank later. I placed a minnow and a goldfish on each turtles side and the snail on Rex’s side. Several days into the divided tank, the remaining minnows disappeared at about the same time.

It really makes me happy when the turtles eat the live fish, and even happier still to know for sure that Cinderella ate one too!! The gold fish are still there, I think they just don’t like the taste of goldfish.

Then we thought that the snail was dead. With Rex biting and clawing at it a few times a day, we thought he might have gotten successful. So I went out and bought 3 snails and 3 Chinese Algae Eater fish. After putting the new animals in the tank, the dead snail proved it was alive and not dead after all. So now the turtles each have 2 snails, a gold fish, and Chinese Algae Eater each, with Cinderella having an extra Algae Eater.

The Algae Eaters are quick nervous little fish that the turtles are likely never going to eat. The snails are likely going to become turtle food one of these days. If the snails spawn and create dozens of baby snails, the tank will not become snail infested – I’ve no doubt the turtles will enjoy eating all those tiny, yummy baby snails!!

On an extra note: the turtles are now being fed every other day as they are no longer hatchlings (over 2″ in length).