All Turtles Message Board

Heloise · Guest Joined: 04 May 2005 Posts: 3

Helpful turtle-lovers, can you please help me? I am an inexperienced new turtle owner with a medium-sized tank and a Rio 180 water pump filter. This tank will. not. stay. clean. I rinse out the sponge in the filter every day; I scoop out his poo whenever I see it; I change the water in the tank at least twice a week. And while I'm aware that turtle care takes some work (and I'm fine with that!) this seems a little excessive, and I'm worried that I'm doing something wrong that could damage my wonderful new turtle.

What could be the problem? At first I thought it was because I was occasionally feeding him grapes which would leave pulp and peel scraps to dirty everything up. So I stopped. It got a little better, but not much. I've had him for about 2 months and I'm both worried that this could be damaging his health and getting a little frustrated with having to change the water twice a week! (It takes some serious time!) What can be done?

Thank you in advance, turtle-friends.

STRAYKINGFISHER · Posted: Wed May 04, 2005 3:08 pm Post subject:

What do you mean by dirty, do you mean algae?

If you have your tank facing a window you will have alot of problems with algae, if you have the right conditions algae will bloom and cloud up your water and turn it greenish, face the tank away from the direct sunlight so that it won't be as much of a problem.

I have my tank by a window but the sun doesn't hit it directly, and the little sun it gets is only about an hour's worth in the afternoon, also if you have rocks in the tank, they tend to collect slime and algae as well, I took all of mine out, I haven't had any real problems with cleanliness, I still change the water about once a week or if I see that the bottom of the tank is getting a little too messy.
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Posada · Level 2 Joined: 18 Apr 2005 Posts: 31

You can feed your turtle in a different tank or if hes a small guy maybe in a tupperware container feed him in there. My tank's water gets cloudy quickly as well. Ive just come to realise that I cant have the crystal clear water that we all wish the tank could maintain. You can buy a turtle waste reducer, personally the kind I use, I dont notice any difference or maybe im not looking hard enough. I also use a small fish net to scoop out the dropings and other floaters.

I hope I provided some options or good advice.

dixieee · Posted: Thu May 05, 2005 7:01 pm Post subject:

or maybe ur filter isn't strong enough cz they are usually for fish setups and fish don't mess it up as much as turtles do..so if has to be 4x stronger than the actual tank size or i don't know how they measure it cz i don't use one
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Wed 10/27/2004 is the worst day..i lost my best friend Leo

so now i have a female RES, Green, and a cute stupid male YBS, Mint

5/4/2006 RIP Lemon, u were my first rescue and i'm so proud of u. will never 4get u

mariza · Level 4 Joined: 10 Jul 2003 Posts: 1339

How many gallons is your "medium-size" tank? It sounds like the filter is too small for it.

Posada · Level 2 Joined: 18 Apr 2005 Posts: 31

this weekend ive been meaning to clean my tank, change the water and all because it got very cloudy. But I didnt have time to do it this weekend and the filter cleaned it up itself. So I just give the filter some time to clean up. The water is crystal clear now.

J double R · Posted: Wed Jun 08, 2005 8:14 pm Post subject:

I have a super powerful filter, and a snail that help keep my water clearer than usual. my crawdad just died:( poor old fella! hes used to eat all the extra food that my baby turtle wasnt eating, but now the snail does it so it ended up working out. Maybe try getting a crawdad or a snail, they might help with the dirtyness of the tank...ooh and a snail will eat the algae so its a bonus!