Hi. I had posted a thread recently titled “forced cohabitation” about a situation that is happening at my house. Our basement flooded, and due to extreme space constraints within our home, we were forced to place three medium sized Red Eared Sliders in one enclosure on a temporary basis. I was seeking advice on how to best cope with the less than ideal situation. The good news is, after nearly two weeks, we have not had any issues whatsoever with aggression, or any turtles not getting their share of food at feeding time, or any of them not getting a chance to bask. They eat well together, they all bask together, and nobody is in any immediate danger.
I suppose our result was the best we could have hoped for. Now that we have achieved this level of cohabitation success with three turtles living together, albeit on a temporary basis, I feel that I have learned a few things about Red Eared Slider cohabitation and I’m a bit surprised about what I have learned and would like to start a discussion.
The background for our situation is that we had two female turtles that are “rescues” who had always lived together. The third turtle was my son’s female turtle who is younger but equal in size (the older rescue turtles are thought to be somewhat stunted due to previous poor husbandry) and she had always lived alone in her own tank.
So, my personal experience is with keeping a single turtle alone, keeping two turtles together, and now with keeping three turtles all together.
I had always felt that our pair of turtles made for a very attractive display. Both of our tanks, the one that had housed one turtle and the one that had housed two, had always been set up very similarly with the only real difference being that two turtles lived in one tank and only one turtle lived in the other. I always liked the tank with two turtles the best and enjoyed the way they interacted, and thought two turtles in a tank is really prettier than a one turtle in a tank.
Based on that previous experience, I had thought that as long as all three turtles got along and did not interfere with each other’s daily activities, that I would quite enjoy the opportunity to observe three turtles sharing an enclosure. I have honestly quite enjoyed observing them, but I have observed some unexpected results.
1)feeding time is hard to manage. They all have been known to beg pretty aggressively when it’s time for pellets, and to splash around a bit as I’m sure all turtles do. With the three of them together, you cannot get near the tank when they are begging without getting significantly wet. This is making feeding time very hard to deal with. There is so much splashing that they are splashing water out of the tank and onto the floor. This tank is a 75 gallon that is only half full! The front of this tank (the dry part) gets so splashed with water droplets that you can no longer see through it! The person feeding them will get their feeding hand wet, with water splashed all the way up to the elbow – and that’s if you just drop the food fast and run away. It’s really over the top. They splash so much at feeding time that it’s like running an outboard motor in your bath tub.
2)They eat more. I’m sure of it. They always beg and always want more, but with three of them together it’s worse. When they don’t feel they were fed enough, one of them will start eating the floating dock and the only way to make her stop is to offer more food. She has been eating the dock a lot lately. I watch them eat – she’s not getting any less than she did before, but she is reacting as if she’s eating less and she’s so starved she has to go eat her dock for dessert. In general, I really think they are noticeably wanting more food. Some sort of food beggar’s mob mentality, I assume. It was never this bad with only two living together. Adding a third turtle seems to have amplified this issue tenfold. I was not ready for that.
3)I just don’t like the way three turtles in one in tank looks. I don’t really know why. I do like the way two turtles in one tank looks, and I don’t know why three strikes me as so different aesthetically, but it does. It’s not just about the level of overcrowding either. I see pictures of two sliders in an overcrowded tank and I can see that they need more space, but the turtle tank still looks nice to me. When I see three turtles in an overcrowded tank, it is not nearly as pleasant to look at as far as I’m concerned. I can’t completely put my finger on what the difference really is (beyond the obvious).
4)They act a little differently. I think this is the largest part of it. I think two turtles behave more naturally, more like they would with a whole tank to themselves. When you add in a third, it’s as if somebody is always hanging out right next to somebody else, or often times all three hanging out together in a group (back to the food beggar’s mob mentality they seem to develop, I suppose).
When I first put all three together in the same tank, I was thinking in that back of my mind that if we did not have any issues with aggression, food hogging, or equal basking opportunities that I might actually prefer to keep all three together moving forward. I had thought even if it means another tank upgrade, it might be nice to have a little colony of three all living together in one tank as long as they can live together peacefully. It would mean maintaining one tank instead of two, so it would save a little work.
I was wrong. I cannot wait to get these three girls split up back into two tanks. I understand that not all turtles cohabitate well to begin with, and a single turtle per enclosure is the usual recommendation, but with that said - I also know that many people do keep two, three, and sometimes even more turtles together and that cohabitation does happen and is not completely unheard of.
I am curious if anybody happens to share my opinion that one turtle per tank is nice, and two can be even nicer, but three is just too much? That is what I’ve learned from all of this. That I do like two turtles together, as long as they live well together, but I do not like three turtles together even if they get along as well as could be hoped for. It’s just different. I guess two’s company, and three’s a crowd.
Opinions? What says you?
