All Turtles Message Board

amymay3 · Guest Joined: 15 Dec 2004 Posts: 4

I have had my turtle now for a year. He is doing well! The person I got him from said he was 13 years old. a couple of questions, Do turtles need turtle company? He seems lonely. How do you tell the gender? Does that matter? How big should the tank be for two turtles if I get another one? Where is a good place to buy tanks?

dixieee · Posted: Thu Nov 10, 2005 4:57 pm Post subject:

it should be easy to tell the gender since ur turtle is 13 Smile

long nails+thin long tail= male, short nails+short stubby tail=female. check this link http://www.austinsturtlepage.com/Info/info.htm scroll down a bit and u'll find pix about sexing turtles.

if ur turtle turns out to be a female, i personally don't suggest getting her any company at all cz females show aggressiveness in let's say 97% of the cases (if not more) Rolling Eyes

if it's a he and u get a female, there'll be a very big chance of mating and it requires a lot of reading and knowledge so if u're not ready for that i don't advise u either. but if u think ur turtle is lonely, u can talk to it, put in on the floor or the bathtub for exercise, put some moderately big rocks that it can move around in its setup, get some guppies that it can chace and eat, put a ping pong ball that it can play with..

still for ur Q about size: in general, the rule says 10 gallons per every inch of turtle length and u add the sums up if u have more than one. eg) if u have 2 turtles whose shells are 3 inches each, 30+30=60 gallons. too much yeah i know but that's the best case

a good place to buy tanks, sorry i can't answer that cz i don't live in the US and not so familiar with the good shops and bargains

ok so welcome to the board Smile

_________________
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

amymay3 · Guest Joined: 15 Dec 2004 Posts: 4

thanks for the advice. that's so cool that turtles might play with a ping pong ball Laughing

dixieee · Posted: Fri Nov 11, 2005 4:03 pm Post subject:

anytime

yep u can put other things too. i got a small floating boat for them and some duckies but they didn't like those, actually they got scared of them Rolling Eyes

_________________
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

amymay3 · Guest Joined: 15 Dec 2004 Posts: 4

hey dixiee is the length measured from head to tail to determine tank size Question

what about width Question

where to buy a tank? petco?

dixieee · Posted: Sat Nov 12, 2005 10:09 am Post subject:

nope it's measured from beginning of the shell to the end. like this:

"The measurement of a turtle is done as a straight line from the front of the carapace to the back. This is called Straight Carapace Length (SCL). This is accomplished by using an imaginary line that goes through or above the turtle. You do not want to go along the ridge of the carapace, because in some species this is highly domed and wil give you an inaccurate measurement. Picture it as though you were placing bookends and the front and back of the turtle, and then measuring the distance between bookends." from http://www.austinsturtlepage.com/Info/info.htm

the width is not a big deal it's not needed for determining that Smile

for the tanks, i'm sorry cz i'm not really sure where's the best place to get one from the US since i don't live there

so btw, did u find out its gender? Smile

_________________
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

TallysMom · Level 2 Joined: 25 Jul 2005 Posts: 60

For tanks, I'd shop around on the Internet -- AND if you live in an area where there's an active section on Craigslist, http://www.craigslist.org, that is a great place to find tanks at reasonable prices. And everything else, for that matter. New stuff is so expensive, but people are willing to part with things they no longer use for very little $.

Try the Pets Community board (not the discussion forum), and also the Free, Household and General Classified areas.

I got all my stuff there for probably 10% of its original prices. Tanks, stands, filters, lights, decor, the works.

If you don't have a Craigslist in your area, try the classified ads.