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cov-hog
Apr 13, 2013
Be careful about bricks and cinder blocks - they could jack up the pH of the water. I had an incident where I used bricks to support a 12"x12" flooring tile to make a sunning platform for an aquatic turtle and all the feeder fish instantaneously died. The turtle started squinting his eyes underwater as well and wouldn't come out of his shell until I put the old river rocks back.

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cov-hog
Apr 13, 2013

eggyolk posted:

Recently MY GIRLFRIEND and I decided to try feeding our Red Eared Slider live food for once. He's about 3 years old and plenty big so we purchased a dollars worth of Rosy Red Minnows at the local pet store. Our turtle loves them after years of pellet and freeze dried shrimp.

Problem is I think I've taken a liking to the remaining two rosy reds and want to keep them around. Currently they're in a tiny 0.5 gallon carry-case tank, while our turtle is in a 5.5 gallon tank, soon to be replaced with a 15 gallon due to arrive any day now. My hope is to move the rosy reds into the turtles old 5.5 tank, add filter/gravel/light/decor, and keep the little guys alive while introducing healthy quarantined friends as time goes on. They seem like the perfect low-maintenance fish and a convenient food source for our turtle should any of them kick the bucket. Does anyone have any tips for this approach, or advice to improve the odds of these 10 cent guys survival?

Oh, dude, I hope you maybe mis-typed something. You've had a turtle in a 5gal for three years?? That's ... really awful. The 15gal is "better" but really it's no where near good enough. Slugworth is totally right about any aquatic turtle needing as much space as possible.

I had a 9" African helmeted turtle for many years. I rescued him from bad conditions where he was living in absolute filth in a 20gal with a regular aquarium filter meant for a 10 gallon. We moved across the country and he got a 40 gallon breeder tank that was still honestly a little too small for him. I used a pond filter to turn over the tank like 200 times an hour and it still got fouled pretty quickly (turtles are gross). Please upgrade your tank!!

Re: rosy reds. I kept my turtle tank stocked with minnows for that guy. He mostly loved them. Sometimes he'd rampage around and bite them all in half just for kicks I guess, and other times he wouldn't touch them for weeks. That was really cool because when they're big and strong and healthy from swimming in the high-flow water all the time they are actually really neat fish. Mostly he'd just snack on them, though.

I wouldn't necessarily feed your turtle dead minnows, if your pets should die. They likely would have died of some disease and it's not a great idea to feed sick food to any animal...

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