All Turtles Message Board

rachf19 · Guest Joined: 09 Jun 2006 Posts: 1 Location: New Jersey

Hi everyone,

This is my first post, and I appreciate any information that you all can provide.

Here's the deal: I have two turtles, one painted (Elmo), one mississippi map (Cleo). Elmo is pretty small, Cleo is giganic! I've had them both for approx. 10 years, and they've always gotten along well. All of a sudden, they've recently begun biting eachother. Cleo will bite Elmo's tail, Elmo has taken to latching on to Cleo's outer neck skin suff and hanging on for dear life! I'm concerned that one of them (or both, really) will get hurt.

Why would they do something like this? Is there anything I can do to stop this behavior?

TIA,
Rachel

turtle_grl77 · Level 4 Joined: 18 Nov 2005 Posts: 985 Location: Florida

Sounds like you would need to seperate them. What size tank do you have them in? Welcome to the board btw.

dixieee · Posted: Sat Jun 10, 2006 4:51 am Post subject:

welcome to the board Smile

in ur case, there are 2 causes to this problem:

1- even if they lived together for a long time, there will be a time when they get territorial. maybe the tank isn't big enough to hold both of them??

2- are they from the same gender? if yes, could be fighting cz of that. if no, could be trying to mate but the other isn't responding.

btw, do u have pix of them? that's a nice combination 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