My turtle

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Z Trip

Fire Eel
MFK Member
Aug 15, 2006
1,924
7
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Canada
This is my Chinese soft shell turtle Smoothie. Out of all the turtles species that exist, soft shell are my favorite. It took me a bit to find something small enough for me to keep let alone one in my area. The only turtles available around here are red ear sliders. I bought Smoothie back in the summer time at roughly 3.5". Currently he is 5" and doing great. The tank she is in is a 50 gallon but will be moved to my pond outside in the summer time. Once September swings around, I will be buying her a 108 gallon pond for my basement for her, I will keep everyone updated. Turtle eats shrimp, scallops, tilapia and other fish fillets from the market, a long with earth worms from the yard(in warmer weather) and turtle food. At the bottom of her tank is two pieces of granite tile upside down to help file down her claws. I used to have sand but my filters could no longer tank it. Filters are two of the aquaclear 70's. All comments welcome :)

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My turtle basks for roughly 2 hours every morning. I strongly urge everyone with turtles, "basking" or not to provide land area.

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Very nice turtle, good work on the above tank basking area.

And I not only concur but I think anyone who doesn't provide a land area for any turtle (other than maybe FRT) should not keep them.


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I love your basking setup! For a moment I didn't even realize there was water in your tank, haha. I was like, "WTF is this guy doing? how is that thing alive?"

Well done though, looks really cool.
 
I really like your turtle! At the pet store I worked at, we had several of these, and they were very friendly!
 
Very nice turtle and unique basking area...ive been looking for some albino softies for some time now. Def. Agree on softies over hard shelled turtles, typically more aquatic aswell. I currently have a 16" fem. Florida ss and a 6" male spiney ss. Surprisingly my large female rarely basks fully out of water even with uvb lighting. She prefers 2-3" of water on her platform. Maybe due to her size?

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Looks great, my male is probably slightly larger but also basks frequently. I would recommend sand if you can find a way to make it work, part of their natural behaviour is to dig and forage through a soft sandy/mud substrate.

Best,
Paul
 
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