Urgent Care :: my female turtle has never laid eggs

[tapioca]

it is agout 12 years old, and I'm concerned it has never laid any eggs. It once excibited the behavior of being gravid but I didnt know much about turtlues at that time so I didnt do anything. That was some years ago and she has never had that behavior again. Is that normal??

she lives in a medium tank with a male, wich is kind of stressful for her, the male sometimes is agressive, but most of the time its calm

in the last days she almost never came out of the water for basking, and tries to swim and swim all the time, what does that mean?

[jozzep]

I've read that this is not unusual......
My turtles swim all the time as well, i guess it means that they're alive lol

[theartbook35]

Ya know, sometimes human woman hit that hormonal stage early, and then they go kind of like rewind what their bodies just tried to accomplish. I wonder if female turtles do the same thing...

If your turtle was gravid and didn't lay eggs, she would've become egg bound and then died. The fact that she's alive says she's never been officially gravid.

Since you know that living with a male is stressful for her, refusing to bask could be the cause of that. When she's swimming, is it rather frantic? The male might have claimed dominance over the basking spot, and kicked her out. One of my two turtles, the larger one, did that to her tank mate a long time ago.

Having a female and male together means, if they do decide to mate, you'll have baby turtles to deal with. People on this forum will tell you to do one of two things: Terminate the fertile eggs, or raise the babies and find them a home. Both options are very irritating, and not worth it, at all. If you really don't want babies, or to terminate eggs, you will want to separate them. It's a health and safety issue as well, since, a stressed out female, who is usually much larger than a male, will get frustrated with her living conditions, and start kicking the crap out of that tank mate of hers. It won't be pretty.

I'm not really sure what you means by a medium tank... How many gallons does their house hold? Or, better yet, what are the dimensions of the tank? (Length, height, width) There should be about 10 gallons per inch of both of your turtles. If your tank is too small, this could be adding to her stress.

[SpenceMasta]

i also have had my turtle for 12 years, she's never laid eggs either, i've never seen her exhibit the gravid symptoms, she always been healthy and active so im not really concerned, it saves me a lot of worrying over the process

[tapioca]

the tank is about 70 x 40 x 30 cm, and its filled with about 30 lit. (I'm sorry, don't know how many gallons is that, but I'm thinking of buying a bigger tank for the female only, and that tank will be kept for the male so that she is less stressed

thanks for the advice!

[seanwb]

The tank is way way too small. 30 litres is only 8 US gallons..

For each 2.5 cm of shell length you should have 37.5 litres of water