Habitat - Indoor :: Looking for some suggestions on a "temporary" indo

[BobDinosaur]

This post will also contain information on how NOT to do things.


We have a small koi pond in our yard (small being relative here, it's several hundred gallons in a two tier pond) with an assortment of plants and a few bullfrogs to keep the fish company. My father ordered a pair of Red Eared Sliders (adults, ~4-5" shell length) in late March, plopping them in the pond when they arrived as the water was quite warm, along with the weather. Things went downhill from there.

So our turtles don't eat for a few days, which isn't an immediate concern as they are new to their environment. But when we didn't see them at all for several days we grew concerned and searched the pond bottom. Nothing. I searched around the pond area and found one hiding in some undergrowth. As for the other, he escaped for areas unknown (no nearby ponds either).

As the weather started getting unseasonably chilly, we took our remaining turtle inside and setup a small tank for her using a large (30-40gallons) plastic container, a few rocks from our pond for a basking area and dechlorinated water. Shortly after we took her inside we were getting temperatures below freezing as a high, which is unusual in SW Ohio. We then upgraded her to a small swimming pool with an added aquarium heater and we kept an electric heater nearby to keep the air warm. During all this time we were unsuccessful in getting her to eat. We tried the pellets, romaine lettuce, turnip greens, mustard greens, carrots, etc, with no success. Then we notice her coughing . It's a respiratory infection of course and due to her not eating (she may not have eaten much since she arrived) since we pulled her inside she quickly faded and died.

We think that the turtle picked this up during the time she was outside, out of the safety of the pond, and coupled with two environment changes in short order, it likely just fried her ability to cope with diseases.

Provided we get another turtle, we've already built a rock fence around the pond that will prevent another escape and I'm thinking about how we might modify our indoor pool as well. We have a number of cats in the house and while they enjoyed watching the turtle, they didn't go after her or stick their paws into or near the pool. Could this have added more stress to the turtle? If so, would adding a visual barrier help calm the turtles in the pool down? We also have an extra filter we were going to add, up until the turtle died on us.

Suggestions and comments welcome, we liked the little guys, but I imagine we killed them with the impromptu nature of all this stuff going on.

[N4784N R4613]

Um, if you value your fish and frogs I would suggest not putting turtles in with them. Even if the fish and frogs are bigger, the turtles will just nip at them until they die, and them tear them apart. Turtles need a place to bask, they can't stay in the water the whole time. Dose your pound have a safe place where they can't get out and bask? As for the indoor set up, you need heat, and UVB lights. Both the heat and the UVB lights need to be shining over the indoor basking spot. For the outdoor pound, the sun will provide the heat and UVB.

You also need a water heater for the indoor set-up, that can keep the water at 76-78F. And a filter to keep the water clean.

[SpotsMama]

That's a sad story! It's very hard to know what to do with turtles until you're used to them. I'm sorry for your loss.

Your pond sounds very beautiful. Since it's two tiers, maybe you could confine your turtles to one part and let the fish and frogs have the other part. Someone on here had that sort of a setup - there was some sort of barrier between the two sections that would let water flow between them but wouldn't let the fish or turtles pass through. Just be sure the turtles can't get stuck in the barrier. Anything they can get stuck in - they will.

Most people with outdoor turtle ponds will bring their turtles in for the winter. It's just too hard to hibernate them in a man made pond. You can read about it in the info section of this site. I have a large aquariium inside for my turtle when the weather's not good, and an outside pond for him when it is. It's really quite nice. We get to watch him all the time as we don't want to be out by the pond when it's cold either!

If you do decide to get another turtle, be sure the wall you've built is turtle-escape-proof. They are real acrobats and can climb almost anything climb-able.

I wouldn't worry too much about the cat being in the turtle's line-of-sight being stressful for the turtle - unless the turtle is acting stressed, of course. Just be sure the cats can't get to the turtles. They coud get hurt if the turtle bites their paws (a turtle has a bite like a steel trap) or, if the turtles are small, they cat could do them some damage.

[BobDinosaur]

We ordered a second batch of turtles a week or so ago, a Western Painted Turtle and another RES, the Western arrived full of energy and was a little difficult to get out of the shipping bag due to wiggling, the RES a bit scared and easier to handle. In comparison to the previous batch, we discovered that our water is on the basic side of the pH scale, so we started buffering the pond and the indoor pool back to the 7.0 range. The turtles were happy paddling around and getting used to us, they had even started eating the turnip greens we gave them up until today, when I found our RES dead in the water. The RES seemed to be ok yesterday, which makes this even more confusing. All the turtles are from the same supplier, which leads us to believe that their RES aren't holding up well to shipping for some reason.

I should note that we cleaned the pool yesterday, buffered it, dechlorinated it, replaced the water, etc and that the pool is in semi-direct sunlight (depending on time of day) with a plant growing bulb doing double duty, basking rocks and a small aquarium heater (set to 72 F). I'll check the temperature again, though everything seems ideal.

[SpotsMama]

How sad about the RES! Shipping is really hard on turtles. Your best bet would be to adopt one through a rescue organization. There are lots of wonderful RES out there in need of a good home. Here's a list of rescue organizations, maybe there's one in your area:

www.turtlehomes.org

Are you anywhere near Pennsylvania? A man there rescued 200 baby turtles last winter and last I heard they were very healthy and he still had around 90 to adopt out. If you're interested we can give you a link so you might contact him.

It would be good to know what killed the RES. How's the painted doing?

By the way, do I understand correctly that your turtle is now in an outdoor pond? This is posted in the indoor habitat section so I'm a little confused.

[megcornell]

When getting turtles from suppliers, you stand a good chance of getting ill turtles, especially when compounded by the stress of shipping. That being said, it would be hard to figure out if there's anything wrong with your set up as the turtles may well be dying from unrelated causes. From the sounds of things, your set up seems great for turtles, so long as you secured a way to prevent the turtles from escaping the pond.

If the painted is doing well, I'd keep the turtle population at one for now and then in a few months after it appears the painted is thriving you can consider getting a second turtle from a rescue or other nearby organization to avoid shipping. It's also advisable to quarantine any new turtles in case one or the other is ill, so it would be in your best interest to have a quarantine tank set up for a 90 day separation.
Good luck

[BobDinosaur]

Are you anywhere near Pennsylvania? A man there rescued 200 baby turtles last winter and last I heard they were very healthy and he still had around 90 to adopt out. If you're interested we can give you a link so you might contact him.

It would be good to know what killed the RES. How's the painted doing?

By the way, do I understand correctly that your turtle is now in an outdoor pond? This is posted in the indoor habitat section so I'm a little confused.

We are in SW Ohio, which is a good 6 hours from the Penn. border (I've driven the route several times). The paint is still in the swimming pool we're using as an indoor holding tank, we wanted to make sure that our turtles were healthy and eating well before plopping them in the middle of our pond. The paint is healthy as far as we can tell, he was somewhat unhappy with the quarters we provided him with when we were cleaning the kiddie pool and even climbed on top of the RES in a bid to escape. He's certainly a lively one. We will consider a rescue turtle in the future, but we'll likely be sticking with just one while we prep him for pond plopping. I'm working on a rock fence around the pond, there aren't any other sources of water for a good 1/2-3/4 of a mile in any direction, but I don't want him getting away.

[SpotsMama]

You have a good plan. Sticking with the one lively one is best for now. Turtles aren't social creatures, he'll be perfectly happy having the pond all to himself.

By the way, lively is the way they are supposed to be! it's a good sign!

[BobDinosaur]

Remaining turtle seems to have a milky white coating on it rear end between the shells (the middle bit where the legs are), I'm assuming it's a fungal or other infection so I'm going to run out and buy the appropriate dipping solution and clean the pool out again. He's been hiding more, so I assume this is the cause. I'd like to keep my record at 1-3, thank you very much.

[DavidY]

Does your turtle have a dry area to climb up on and bask in the sun? They need to be able to completely dry off every day or so. That along with poor water conditions can contribute to fungus. A basking area with proper light and heat is very important.

[BobDinosaur]

Does your turtle have a dry area to climb up on and bask in the sun? They need to be able to completely dry off every day or so. That along with poor water conditions can contribute to fungus. A basking area with proper light and heat is very important.

Yes he does and he previously enjoyed basking, the water was treated with dechlorination stuff as well as pH balancer to get it close to 7.0. I'm thinking that our dead turtle might have been in there long enough to pass on the nasties to the paint. Looking at some anti-fungals online so I know what to look for when I walk into the store.

[BobDinosaur]

He's currently swimming away in a bucket of Repti-Soak, the bucket is a bit bigger than it should be, but we don't have anything small enough that is also clean. The water is deep enough to give him a good soak plus I've got a cup here to bast- WASH him with.