Turtle's in their Tank
- Thread starter BastardFish
- Start date
i used to keep my FL softshells in gravel too, here are some pics of what happened to them. so after i noticed this, I switched them over to sand. problem solved. I know it is a bad picture (sorry about that, it was taken a long time ago) but if you look, you can see that the back of the shell is jagged and the front was rubbed raw. Also, some things that you cannot see in the pic is the fact that two of its claws were torn out from trying to dig. I did some research and figured out that the gravel was causing it so i switched him over to a play sand substrate and the problems stopped. you can ignore me if you want but i do feel bad for your turtles if you are really that stubborn.
snakeguy101;3463031; said:
Thanks for the pic. Sorry about your turtle, I just hope the OP will be responsible enough to do the same for his turtles.
Why would I ignore you? You have something decent to say here with evidence to back it up this I like and respect. Now my question for you is what size was the gravel and was is smooth grade? Also how much gravel was in there the normal couple inches? I ask just because I really do not even have that in my tank. It is literally only one rock deep and in some spots bare.
Mike D;3460498; said:i agree 100%. if they naturally hide with in the sand then i would consider it a natural thing for them. how would you feel if we just eft you with the bare essentals and nothing more. stick you in a house thats not adequate for what you need? bet you would feel out of place and stressed.
my monitors are arboreal so i give them branches to climb on. do they need them. nope. is it beneficial for them, you bet it is.
it is our responsibility as reptile keepers to do our best in recreating a natural and stress free enviroment for our animals..
it doesnt matter how long you have been around keeping fish and reptiles. i have been keeping herps for about 15 yrs now and i am always learning and adapting my enclosures from what i learn.
and i dont beleive we have many smart mouth 14 year olds on here. in fact if we do most of them tend to take our advice fairly well
I was going to use a similar example in my post; keeping an arboreal species in an enclosure with no climbing aperatus. Yes, the animal will probably survive but you would be hard pressed to convince me you are doing a good job!
BastardFish;3464767; said:
I had about .5-1 inch thick common aquarium gravel. Once i made the switch to sand, i loved it. it looks better, it is easy to clean, and it is better for the turtles.
also, i am not sure how old the ones in the pictures you posted were, but mine was a similar size when he was 4. again, here are some pictures of the same turtle that i posted before after he was switched to sand and grew up a bit:
There are three places where they can come up out of the water in there. I also took all the rock out because truely I did not liker the look it was just left over form the last time I had fish in there. I do have some sand like sedimant (African Cichlid Mix of some sort) it is just a tiny bit larger than play sand. I plan to post a pic because I do have my doubts about it working and want the buy in of people on this.
