Pictures of Turtles (N/A)

RJM62

RJM62

Touchdown! Greaser!
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Jun 15, 2007
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Upstate New York
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Geek on the Hill
I've been taking some pictures for the site I'm working on, and I know a few of the people here also like turtles; so I thought I'd post a few.

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-Rich
 
When I was ten or twelve I had an aquarium with my favorite painted turtles in it. I had built a ramp that led to "the land portion" of my habitat. I kept them all for a number of years. My mother used to let me concoct this foul dish involving raw fish, fish oil, trout chow, and knox gelatin that we used to supplement their diets. You literally put it all in a blender and then set it up in ice cube trays.

I never appreciated how much they "let me get away with" in the spirit of encouraging my interests.

very cool pictures.
 
Nice little guys. We get some turtles around here in N. Illinois crawling out of the lakes and crossing the road. I lived on the beach for a couple of years in FL. I used to get the loggerheads and leatherbacks laying eggs. That is a sight to see. Here is a pic of a hawksbill during my last dive trip to the Cayman Islands.
 

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Paul Allen said:
Rich are these your new turtles?
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Yes, Paul. I'm also building a site about turtle care around them, which is three-quarters finished. I want to submit it for expert review when I finish the last few pages, though. I'm a quick study, but hardly an expert.

-Rich
 
smigaldi said:
Nice little guys. We get some turtles around here in N. Illinois crawling out of the lakes and crossing the road. I lived on the beach for a couple of years in FL. I used to get the loggerheads and leatherbacks laying eggs. That is a sight to see. Here is a pic of a hawksbill during my last dive trip to the Cayman Islands.
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Excellent shot!
 
twdeckard said:
When I was ten or twelve I had an aquarium with my favorite painted turtles in it. I had built a ramp that led to "the land portion" of my habitat. I kept them all for a number of years. My mother used to let me concoct this foul dish involving raw fish, fish oil, trout chow, and knox gelatin that we used to supplement their diets. You literally put it all in a blender and then set it up in ice cube trays.

I never appreciated how much they "let me get away with" in the spirit of encouraging my interests.

very cool pictures.
Click to expand...

Thanks.
 
I think I'm going to name this one Luca Brasi:


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Look at the resemblance:

luca+brasi


The turtle "also sleeps with the fishes." (I have two little catfish in the tank as vacuum cleaners.)

-Rich
 
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How big of a tank is it?

Also, is there a place for the turtle to rest outside of the water or is this breed of turtle adapted to staying in water all the time?

Oh ya, and good looking turtle.
 
This one is a 20-long, but I'm setting up a 40-breeder later this week or early next (I'm still waiting for the power heads for the undergravel filter, and a few other odds and ends). I got a great deal on the new tank, so I decided to upgrade early.

You can see the whole tank at

www.myturtlecam.com

It has a dock for them to bask on. Luca is sitting on the dock in the picture above.

The specie is Southern Painted Turtle (Chrysemys picta dorsalis). They love to swim and spend a lot of time in the water, but they do have lungs and breathe air, if that's what you're asking. They also bask a lot.

Basically, they're either swimming, basking, eating, or sleeping. Not a bad life, actually.

-Rich
 
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RJM62 said:
The specie is Southern Painted Turtle (Chrysemys picta dorsalis). They love to swim and spend a lot of time in the water, but they do have lungs and breathe air, if that's what you're asking. They also bask a lot.

Basically, they're either swimming, basking, eating, or sleeping. Not a bad life, actually.

-Rich
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Ahh, I see the water line in that picture now. I originally thought all of the above pictures were taken while he was under water.

Nope, not a bad life at all. It's nice of you to give them such a sweet setup.
 
sanforce said:
Ahh, I see the water line in that picture now. I originally thought all of the above pictures were taken while he was under water.

Nope, not a bad life at all. It's nice of you to give them such a sweet setup.
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Thanks, They give a lot back, too.

-Rich
 
I hear someone yelling "Big Giant ones!" in the background, lol. Cool!

-Rich
 
When I was a kid, I was lucky to be surrounded by several lakes, all connected by canals. Great place to catch snakes and baby turtles. At one point I had over 100 turtles - softshell, snapping, musk, mud, and a few terrapins known locally as chicken turtles or sliders. I'd only keep them for a few months, then release them - steady supply of new inmates was available so no one got a life sentence. It was a lot of fun and I sure learned a lot.
 
Very cute little guys, good luck with your site. The one thing I see that I would not want to put on a site for turtle care is a rock with sharp looking edges. When I had aquatics (all those years ago...) I used stones that had been polished smooth by water action.
 
Thanks. If you mean the rock that Luca is sitting on, it's actually some sort of air-injected plastic material that floats, almost like Styrofoam. Looks pretty real, though. The "gravel" material is actually Fluorite, which is a clay material designed for planted aquaria. It's good for the plants, and is actually pretty crumbly once it gets wet. Also, the turts don't eat it, for whatever reason.

Also, thanks also for your undergravel filter recommendation. I ultimately decided to use the UGF with reverse-flow powerheads, after reading a bunch of articles about how the conventional UGFs sometimes raised nitrite and ammonia levels when the poo and leftovers clogged the gravel. The reverse-flow heads actually prevent the waste from embedding in the substrate, allowing the water filters to remove it.

I received one ZooMed 501 canister filter in a barter deal, and ordered a second from Big Al Online. Each are rated at 30 gallons maximum, but my math doesn't support that at ~ 90 GPH through 17 cubic inches of media.

But I had the one, and a second cost about the same as the pump I was considering for a homebuilt wet/dry filter with greater carrying capacity; so I went ahead and ordered a second and will try using both, along with the reverse-flow UGF. If they don't work out, I'll just remove all media except the floss and pump both their outputs into a wet/dry filter (use them as strainer/pumps, essentially).

I would like to send you some links to pages to review, if you have the time. I would appreciate your expert input both on the content and the writing style. Although not a kids' site per se, I'm trying to make it simple enough for middle-school kids and up to comprehend.

Thanks again,

-Rich
 
Sure, no sweat when I have the time. I used normal UG filters, and planted lots of underwater plants to take care of the nitrites (they are fertilizer, after all). Every so often the turtles would start chomping on the plants, which was fine. Plant material is a normal part of most aquatic turtle diets. From the sounds of it, it seems your own aquarium is far better than mine.
 
steingar said:
Sure, no sweat when I have the time. I used normal UG filters, and planted lots of underwater plants to take care of the nitrites (they are fertilizer, after all). Every so often the turtles would start chomping on the plants, which was fine. Plant material is a normal part of most aquatic turtle diets. From the sounds of it, it seems your own aquarium is far better than mine.
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Thanks. I really do appreciate your input. I doubt whether your last sentence is true, but thanks anyway.

I'm trying to do this in a textbook manner because it's for educational purposes. But it's also very satisfying. Oddly enough, when you research the right ways to do things, and then do those things in those ways, good results usually follow.

As is the usual case when I build sites, I'm jumping from page to page making changes. A change in one page suggests a change in another, etc. A few pages I haven't started yet. The home page, for example, is usually the last one I write.

So I'll send you some links once I have a few pages more-or-less "finished" so I don't waste your time with things that I'm already in the process of changing. Maybe later today or maybe within the next few days, depending on how many fires I have to put out for clients.

Thanks again,

-Rich
 
My comment about the rock was sort of an educational purposes sort of thing. I figured it was some sort of injectable molded plastic made to look like a rock, there are lots of things like that on the market. However, someone less astute might look at it land think its OK to have a real rock like that. I myself never liked things like that because they are hard to clean.

Your UG system is actually better than the one I used to use in one aspect. Because I was pulling everything into the gravel (and making fertilizer) the gravel because heavily intercalated with particulate material and had to be cleaned quite frequently. The way you've got it you shouldn't have to clean the substrate all too often. However, when the young ones get older there isn't a filter in the world that will remove the scat (too heavy) and you'll be doing some gravel cleaning anyway. Not unless filters have come a long way since my youth, and casual inspection suggests they have not.

I used to throw in a couple Danio (zebrafish) for the turtles to chase. The fish were (and are) inexpensive and quick, so the turtles usually couldn't catch them. And if they did, well they made a nice snack.
 
steingar said:
My comment about the rock was sort of an educational purposes sort of thing. I figured it was some sort of injectable molded plastic made to look like a rock, there are lots of things like that on the market. However, someone less astute might look at it land think its OK to have a real rock like that. I myself never liked things like that because they are hard to clean.

Your UG system is actually better than the one I used to use in one aspect. Because I was pulling everything into the gravel (and making fertilizer) the gravel because heavily intercalated with particulate material and had to be cleaned quite frequently. The way you've got it you shouldn't have to clean the substrate all too often. However, when the young ones get older there isn't a filter in the world that will remove the scat (too heavy) and you'll be doing some gravel cleaning anyway. Not unless filters have come a long way since my youth, and casual inspection suggests they have not.

I used to throw in a couple Danio (zebrafish) for the turtles to chase. The fish were (and are) inexpensive and quick, so the turtles usually couldn't catch them. And if they did, well they made a nice snack.
Click to expand...

Okay, thanks. I'll be clear about the "rock." It's stayed clean so far, actually. I run it under the tap once in a while, but it doesn't seem to need it. In any event I wouldn't bother going overboard cleaning something that costs $6.99 to replace at my local PetLand. Considering all the money I've sunk into this habitat (pun intended), the cost of the basking dock is trivial.

I figure I won't need the catfish any more once I replace the tank (they're only in there as vacuum cleaners because some parts of the tank are hard to reach with a vaccum), so I'll put them in one of the fish tanks and replace them with some zebras (and maybe plecos) when I put the new one up. I just got a stand yesterday (actually, a $35.99 table from IKEA; I bought two extra legs at four bucks each for good measure), so I may do the initial setup later on today or tomorrow.

The water quality in the established tank is textbook-perfect. So I want to steal some Fluorite and water from the established tank and put it in the new one, let it sit a few days with heat and aeration, and then add the rest of the fluorite and just enough water for the canister filters to grab when my order comes in.

Then I'll let the filters run a few days with just floss to clear the fluorite mud, move the tank to its permanent location, add the rest of the water and the plants, put the permanent media in the filters, wait another day or so, test the water, and introduce the turtles.

This sounds like a lot of work, but I'm enjoying it immensely, lol. It's like reproducing a tiny version of the Almighty's creation, right here in my office.

Thanks again,

-Rich
 
Sounds like you're being quite careful, which is never a bad thing. For awhile I had a couple of Cichlids in one of the turtle tanks. They then mated, got territorial, and chased the turtles out of the water. Of course, the fingerling cichlids made good turtle food. I had at least one mata-mata that grew up eating nothing else.
 
Thanks. I'm trying to do this as well as I can.

I found out this morning that the rest of the stuff is supposed to come today, and the field job I had was postponed until next week; so I assembled the table and moved it into the new position. I'm in the process of setting it up.

I needed to take a break from writing for a while, anyway. I'm trying to close a decent Web site deal for a resort in North Carolina. Then when I got done with them, I sat down to write some turtle pages, but my mind wasn't going along. So I figured I'd so something physical for a while.(I should have a few links to draft pages ready to send you later today or some time tomorrow, however.)

Here's the table. I think it's perfect. With the tank lined up on the front left, there's just enough room in back and on the right for the filters and other paraphernalia.

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That saved me about a hundred bucks, lol.

-Rich
 
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