Care of Aquatic Turtles as Pets

Video Transcript

"Hi, I'm James Dix from Reptile Rescue in Salt Lake City, Utah. We're discussing how to set up an aquatic turtle habitat. Most of the aquatic turtles people get are either mud turtles or red ear sliders from your local pet store. When you get one of these turtles, you need to make sure when you buy a tank that you consider that this turtle will get a lot larger than what it is. Some states, it's illegal to buy two inch ones, and some states, they'll sell 'em to ya. If it's a two inch turtle, in a year it can grow up to be about four inches or more, depending upon the size of your terrarium or aquarium set up. So, when you buy one of these, usually you want to buy at least a twenty gallon to start out with, so that you don't have to turn around in, like, six or eight months and buy another tank. Make sure you get a good filtration pump set up for it, because pumping all the feces and waste is very critical with these turtles. Okay. You need to make sure you have a UVB strip light in there, and they do also like a basking light. You need to put either a flotation rock in there, or you can do half the tank with dirt in it, the other half with gravel and a partition between it. A piece of plexi-glass works great to keep the dirt from falling in the water side. This provides the turtle to get up on land when he wants to get out of the water and dry off, and then he can climb back in to the water. You have the heat covered by the heat lamp that's on there, and also UVB strip light. Put these on timers, usually at least a minimum of eight hours a day, usually eight in the morning, five in the afternoon is shut off. And provide 'em with a good, clean tank. Make sure if it gets algae growing on the sides, that you do scrub that off."