How to Clean a Turtle Tank

Video Transcript

"Hi, I'm James Dix from Reptile Rescue Service in Salt Lake City, Utah. We're discussing how to clean a turtle tank. This would be covering whether it's a desert tortoise or an aquatic turtle. If it's a desert tortoise in sand, you would actually take the sand and run it through a sifting screen. Get out the waste, and if it gets to be about ten months old, then you would change out the sand. Wash down the walls of the cage with a light Clorox Bleach mixed in with water, and make sure you wash it down real good to kill any bacteria. If you have an aquatic turtle, a red eared slider, the filtration pump is very critical that you keep this clean weekly. You need to scrub out the tank when algae starts to grow, dump all the water out and put new water in. Water turtles are real nasty, their feces plugs up the pump, so you have to stay on it and make sure that it is continually clean. If you do not keep 'em clean, they actually will get a fungus, and it can go down in their mouth, into their or organs or their stomach, and it can be fatal, and it'll spread to any other aquatic turtle in that tank."