first Chinese New Year

Just posted this in the Turtle Times forums…just thought I’d share it here too:

first off, some pix of my turtles tank with the holiday (Christmas trees) background on…

Me and my girlfriend went to a place that was doing calligraphy of peoples names in Chinese for free in celebration of the Chinese New Year. Rather than having our names done like normal people would, we had our turtles’ names done. This is Cinderella:

…and this is Rex:

…and their tank with their Chinese names as decoration

Rex

Cinderella

I know the tank they are sharing is way too small for them and I’m tired of doing 100% water changes all the time..so we bought them a ginormously humongous 150 gallon tank…

…but it’s too big and really overwhelms our small living room. We’re trying to switch it to a smaller more manageable tank that should be big enough for them for a few years

And a pic of a snail riding a napping Cinderella. The turtles have killed several other snails, but this one is a survivor. It has really learned to protect itself from two very friendly, biting turtles

Hope you enjoyed the pix!!

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!

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.

Rearranged the turtle tank

I wanted to give the turts more water to swim in. I bought some UVC pipes and attached them under the Zilla basking ramp with some aquarium rock epoxy. Then I moved the small internal filter and heater to the back wall and stacked them up for the ramp to rest on.

When it was all set-up, I noticed that the PVC pipes were big enough for the turtles to fall into and that they might get stuck inside and drown, so I stuffed some unused aquarium air tubes in them.

With the basking spot a lot higher than before, I got worried that they might be too close to the heat/uv bulb. I put to use a lamp stand to raise the lamp higher.

The tank now looks incredibly different, and the turts certainly enjoying having more swimming room…

Current set-up

I just responded to a question about what the setup for the turtles looks like in the RedEarSlider.com Turtle Talk forums. So, copying from what I wrote over there, here is my setup:

ok. They’re currently set-up in a 5g tank, which they are going to outgrow soon.
There is a Zilla corner basking ramp on the right, a Zoo-med 501 filter in the background to the left, a heater in a guard on the left wall, and a dive clean mini in an angle on the back wall. There is also a thermometer in the water on the front glass wall.

here’s another angle of the whole setup. The thing hanging on the back right corner is the temperature probe for a Herpstat Thermostat I just got. I’ll be using that when the weather heats up again to control a CHE bulb. The CHE and a UVB/UVA bulb will replace the current basking lamp. I think it’s important to be able to control the heat separately from the light, especially in the summer, when there is a chance that m turtles might bake in too much heat

The white thing in the water is a calcium turtle bone. The Dive clean mini is the first filter I got, before the 501. I still keep it in the tank though, even if it’s ineffective since the turtles like hiding below it and climbing over it.

Lastly, here’s a pic of them basking…I need to clean the glass

no more gravel and a bit about the tank setup

A lot of people don’t recommend having gravel in a turtle’s habitat. I learned first-hand why today.

Gravel is very dirty and hides and keeps tons of dirt in it. When I went to change the water in the turtle tank today, the gravel was filthy. Very filthy. So me and AG cleaned it out and now the turtles have a clean tank bottom. The turtles don’t seem to mind and I’m sure they appreciate having much cleaner water to swim in.

That’s Rex climbing up on the water heater.

Rex on the steps on the right and Cinderella on the left under the small filter. An empty bottom looks a lot cleaner.

Rex trying to swim through the glass.

So far this is what the turtle set-up is:

- 5 Gallon aquarium. Space is an issue in the apartment so I got a 5 gallon aquarium. The turtles are going to outgrow it, but for the time being it works very well. Eventually, a new tank will be needed.

- Dive Clean Mini Filter. The first filter that I bought. It’s a really small submersible filter that I bought together with the aquarium. This was before I knew anything about filters. It’s a sponge filter (mechanical) which obviously isn’t enough to clean the waste of two turtles. The turtles like hiding underneath it and hanging onto and standing on it, which is why I still keep it there.

- Zoo Med 501 Turtle Filter. After doing some research I settled on getting this canister filter. It works great! I won’t be buying the Zoo Med carbon filter packs since they’re too expensive and aren’t that great from what I’ve read. Same about the sponge. I bought some activated carbon and will be getting a filter media bag soon. When the sponge needs to be replaced, I also won’t get the Zoo Med replacement – I’ve read that there are some other better and cheaper materials you can use instead of a sponge. I know the filter won’t be enough for when the turtles get bigger and we get a larger aquarium, so I’ll be getting a bigger canister filter when that time comes.

- a glass water heater with a plastic guard. Forgot the brands, but they’re good. Should the heater break for any reason in the future, I’ll get an inline heater as a replacement. This will give the turtles a little bit more room and also keeps the electric wires out of the tank. I get worried that they might bite into it and fry themselves, even though I haven’t read of this happening to anyone’s turtles yet.

- Zilla Basking Platform Small Corner Ramp. I had originally picked up some rocks from the neighborhood. After a good cleaning I stacked them up in the tank. They had some rough edges and also weren’t very stable so I got the Zilla platform instead. The turtles like it.

- Thermometer. Thermometers on a strip are a waste and are inaccurate. I know, I got one. It didn’t work too well and didn’t have much range (went up to 85 only). So I got a real aquarium thermometer instead.

- lamp and full spectrum heat/UVB light bulb. Turtles need to bask and they need heat. In the summer though it gets too hot that the water temp even reaches above 90 degrees, which means that the air temperature in there has got to reach 100 degrees or more!! I’ll be getting a ceramic heating element, a proportional thermostat to control it, and a UVB UVA fluorescent bulb. I think it’ll be the best way to make sure it doesn’t get too hot for the turtles in the warm weather and still have them get all the “sunlight” they need.

Rex and Cinderella

On September 1st, me and AG went to Philly on a day trip to eat some authentic Philly Cheesesteaks and see the sights. Walking through a market, we saw some turtles and bought a pair.

We’ve named them Rex and Cinderella, two Red Eared Sliders, who are actually more expensive and complicated than I first thought. Since the pix were taken, we’ve since purchased an aquarium, filters, basking light, food, a basking spot, aquarium heater, and such. Anyway, here are some pix:

We brought them home in a chinese food disposable tupperware. They were probably over an inch in length.

This is the plastron of Cinderella.

The Plastron of Rex.

This is the second temporary bowl we put them in. I’ll post more about that later.