- Thread starter
- #26
Ludachris
Founder & Zookeeper
- 8,053
- 3,072
- Nov 12, 2001
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Newcastle,
California
Thanks at TON for taking the time to write all this. Extremely helpful. I thought that just running the filter (we got one much bigger than was required) for a few days before the turtle arrived would be enough. I didn't think we might have to add anything, like ammonia, to cycle the filter. Hell, maybe my daughter or my wife did that, I'll have to ask them. I'll look into this a lot more before we get the new turtle though. Thanks again!I've had a turtle for literally 30 years now, since I was ten. THIRTY. I've had girlfriends who were younger than my turtle.
I've also had some pretty elaborate aquarium setups. I don't know why your turtle died, sometimes purchased animals just die- especially exotic ones. However, I can give you a little information about filtration.
First off, the main job of any freshwater aquarium filter, regardless of the animal type, is the nitrogen cycle. That is converting ammonia to nitrites and finally to nitrates (which you remove by changing the water). This is done biologically. You're basically cultivating a biological filter. This takes 4-8 weeks. Turtles produce A LOT of ammonia. Urine, shit and uneaten food- it all becomes ammonia. I'm not sure what the rate for a turtle is but fish create about their own weight in ammonia daily. A turtle probably creates less. To keep ammonia from building up to toxic levels you have to cycle the filter in advance. You do this by adding ammonia incrementally until nitrites appear, then you keep adding ammonia until nitrates appear, and finally, eventually ammonia and nitrites will be at zero and you'll only have nitrates. The filter will be fully cycled. Can a turtle live in water with a little ammonia? Yeah. Much more resistant to it than a lot of fish. But baby reptiles are much less hardy than their adult counterparts. It doesn't take much more than any one wrong thing for them to die.
If you decide to try again recommend this test kit:
https://www.amazon.com/API-FRESHWATER-800-Test-Freshwater-Aquarium/dp/B000255NCI
Test strips are junk. If you get that kit make sure to follow the instructions for nitrate very carefully, it's pretty specific.
Another thing to remember is that aquarium filters are woefully overrated. You need to know the GPH and you need one that can cycle all the water in the aquarium 5-10 times per hour. When it comes to filtration, bigger is always better unless it's a type of fish that doesn't like a lot of current, then you simply need the minimum. When it comes to filtration types I advocate all biological with a little mechanical filtration for water clarity (though your mechanical filtration will grow the beneficial bacteria as well). I do not believe in carbon filtration. First of all, lets say you do use carbon- it will compete with the biological filtration for their food source. Secondly, it doesn't last long. Think about your Brita filter but worse. For it to really work you have to constantly replace it which will cost money. If you have space in your filter for carbon, put some other media in. Some filter floss or sponge or other biomedia- surface area is the name of the game. Then, to mitigate the nitrates you should do up to an 80% water change weekly, or whatever is required to keep nitrates under 5-10ppm. Unfortunately there's is no other great way to deal with nitrates in freshwater. I've seen people create elaborate algae filters and filters with a hundred feet of tubing (the bacteria that eats nitrates is anaerobic, at the end of long tubing the water will be oxygen free). But none of it is very practical. But nitrates are not particularly toxic to turtles and are much less toxic to fish than nitrites and ammonia.
It's all somewhat complicated for a kid. You're basically going to be doing most of the work depending on her age and interest level, which can change instantly- through my teen years my turtle relied a lot on my mom to take care of him.
As far as goldfish, remember that any animal is going to add to the bioload of the aquarium. At some point there is too much animal and not enough water. And goldfish do have quite a large bioload. When I was a kid I put three of them in with the turtle. He actually left them alone and they got pretty big. But one day he killed all three for some reason and was really messy. I've had a couple other fish with him over the years, bluegill, sunfish, etc. The last sunfish got pretty big, almost as long as the turtle, and I am not sure if it died naturally or the turtle killed it, but my turtle was just swimming around with the fish in his mouth until I took it away.
Anyway, good luck with it.