Ghost shrimp and Rex loves fish

Over thanksgiving weekend, Rex and Cinderella were treated with some live ghost shrimp. Needless to say they loved them and gobbled them up almost immediately. One of them survived a few days and I even got to see it molt (change skin, shed like a snake). Needless to say, I will try to raise some of them next year.

Anyway, a few days after Rex ate the Chinese Algae Eater, he ate one goldfish. Then a few days after that, he killed one snail, but didn’t eat it. It really stunk when I fished it out of the tank. A few days later, he ate the last goldfish, then ate another snail. This one didn’t smell, as he ate all of it, all the meat, and left only the shell behind. I can only imagine him sucking the snail off its shell….

Poor animals. But hey, in my mind they were all feeders… I’m glad the feeder goldfish are gone, after almost three months. They made too much waste and just added to the bio-load of an already way too undersized turtle tank.

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!

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).

no more rosy

Sometime this afternoon/evening the turts ate the feeder rosy.  I was surprised that they ate it ahead of the goldfish as it was the fastest swimmer amongst all the fish.  Good job turtles!!

I searched for videos on youtube for sliders eating feeder fish…All the ones with hatchlings that I saw had the turts being fed dead (read: killed) fish. C’mon don’t do that.  If they’re hungry, they’ll catch ‘em.  Proud to say my RES’s caught and killed the two feeders themselves.  What’s that saying, give a man a fish – he eats for a day, teach him how to fish he – he eats for life.  Kind of like that, but you trap the doomed feeder fish in an enclosed glass tank with a shelled baby predator instead.

first time with fish

I’ve been really wanting to give the turtles some live food, as I really want to replicate their natural diet in the wild. And I wanted to start with feeder fish, although they’re really a small part of their natural diet.

Based on online research and browsing through the forums, I settled on feeder guppies as a first choice, then feeder rosies. The three stores I went to didn’t have feeder guppies, only feeder goldfish. The third and last pet shop I went to only had feeder goldfish and one rosy left. So I bought the one rosy and three goldfish. Goldfish aren’t a good choice for turts since they are fatty and have a spiny fin (or something). But I wanted them to have a taste of live food, so I got them anyway.

I wanted to wait for AG to come home before I placed the fish in the turtle tank, so I placed them in a bowl next to the turt tank. Y’know how in some shows or movies, when there’s a cute girl and the boys keep spying on her? That’s how the turtles were acting!! They kept watching and looking at them. At one point, they were even stacked on each other while watching them.

When AG came home, we placed the 4 fish in the tank. The fish started exploring the tank and the curious turtles went after them. They swam too fast for the turtles to catch, but several times we saw them sneak up on them and take some good bites out of their tail fins. LOL!!! The fish are pretty big compared to the turts, they’re still hatchlings.

Night came, then morning, then the turtles feeding time. They ate their commercial turtle food as usual. I watched them a bit, then left them. The 4 fish were still there.

Sometime after noon I went to watch the turtles again. I was counting the fish and counted only 3. I couldn’t believe it, they ate one goldfish!! There was fish scales all over the aquarium floor and no other remains. They ate it up!!

It’s now noon the day after, they haven’t eaten any other fish. I wonder how long until they eat another fish and finish them all…They can take their time though, the fish are helping eat algae and poop, although the goldfish make a lot of poop themselves.

The next feeders I’ll give them will be snails, then crickets, then worms. Yum!!

Here are some pix of the feeder fish:

A blurry pic of the fish with the turtles. The aquarium is doing the mirror effect thing, you see two goldfish and one rosy.

Another pic, clearer this time.