What you need to know about pet turtles!

hey everyone so today we're going to be talking about turtle care doing a little beginner guide for anyone that's thinking about getting a turtle we'll talk about all the things you'll need to know uh for for setting up their tank and things you need in their tank so we'll get started with a tank size now this turtle was brought to me from my girlfriend who moved in and she brought him from about 14 hour drive away so we couldn't bring a tank we brought him in a little tupperware and he's in this 40 gallon tank right now which isn't quite big enough for him we'll be changing it in the future right now he's fairly content but for turtle tank size you're going to need about 10 gallons per inch of turtle so lots of people see these red-eared sliders in the store they're pretty cheap almost every pet store has them and almost every pet store sells them and doesn't give proper information a reddit slider most of the females can get up to about a foot the male's also about a foot but sometimes the males stay a little smaller maybe nine ten inches but they're going to need 10 gallons per inch of shell when they're an adult so a 12 inch turtle is going to need a 120 gallon tank now i suggest getting the tank of the adult size it's going to grow to don't buy a small 10 gallon tank or something for a small turtle and then in a month you'll have to change it and then a couple months later you'll have to get another bigger tank and a bigger tank you want to just set up the proper tank for them for when they're going to be an adult so for like a ready slider you should buy like a 100 gallon tank uh 90 would be okay somewhere around 90 to 125 gallon tank for a red-eared slider if you add a second turtle in uh you don't have to double that number but you might want to add a little more so for like two 12-inch rendered sliders instead of a 120 gallon tank you might want like a 150 gallon tank so the first thing is these guys need big tanks and they're very often sold in improper setups sometimes you'll see baby turtles being sold with these little like beach setups where there's like a little water area and stuff those are horrible please don't do that you need a proper tank and it needs to be big uh don't worry about a baby turtle not being able to swim i've had many people ask me um how deep should the water for a you know couple inch turtle bee and my answer is almost to the top i only leave enough space in my turtle tanks that the turtles can get out of the water baby turtles can swim just fine think about in the wild they're in lakes ponds and rivers all of which are very deep very fast moving if it's a river and they swim and do just fine in nature so they're just fine in a tank fill them up so the first thing is again the size of turtle look up their adult size and get a big tank that's going to fit them for their life some turtles that are smaller are maps and musks they uh many other species of those can get around only six inches so you'll just need like a 60 gallon tank um that's a better choice if you're not looking to get something huge that's steer clear ready sliders unless you want to get a really big tank but a 60 gallon tank is good for uh some musks and maps and painted turtles as well depending on the species of them so we got grampy here if you see some movement in the water a little bit of a dusty stuff that's because i just filled this tank with a five gallon jug to add some more water to it so tank size is really important they need a big tank just say that one more time you need about 10 gallons per inch of shell in the tank you need a really good filter i use a fluval u4 which is rated for i believe up to about 58 or 60 gallons this is a 40 gallon tank but it's only got about 30 gallons of water in it so i've got about double the filtration rating of the size of tank and that's really important because turtles are pretty messy i decided to go with a bare bottom tank um but i do suggest to put gravel in if you like gravel can house beneficial bacteria which will help the tanks uh water chemistry but i kind of like how the bare bottom looks and my fluval has some bio cylinders in there for beneficial bacteria to grow so i just did a bare bottom tank but gravel is quite fine as you can see in my tank i don't have very many objects just have a kind of a little decoration here and then there's a little log under there you don't want to fill it up with too much stuff i'd put in a couple rocks maybe a plant or two if you want to make it look nice but leave a lot of open space so the turtle can swim around if there's tons of stuff in there and he can't swim then then he's not able to swim and that's not good another thing people need to do with a turtle tanks is get a hundred percent dry basking area now i've got two examples in here this is the bad example these are sold all over the place you'll see them in every pet store and they never get fully dry every time the turtle goes up they kind of dip under water they don't float very well and your turtle needs to get 100 dry otherwise mold and other things can start growing inside their shell so they need to get out and bask and get 100 dry so these docks really aren't good i'd suggest making one on your own or this is one that i found that is pre-made this is a pen plaques brand and it stays pretty dry for anything up to about a nine inch turtle you might be able to see a tiny bit of water up there but again i just filled the tank and splashed around tons of water so you need a hundred percent dry basking area with that basking area you need uvb lighting and heat now this can be accomplished with either one or two bulbs here i'm using two let me show the other one real quick for my bearded dragon i'm using this bulb it's a mercury vapor bulb and it gives off heat and uvb so with that bulb if i had that on my turtle tank that would be the only bulb i need one single light for the turtle tank giving heat and uvb now i had these lights at home when i set up this tank so i did this one different this is a uvb bulb and this is a basking heat bulb so basically these two lights that light does all in one it's heat light and uvb separate so hopefully you understand that the other light just does what both of these lights do but with one bulb so you're going to need that basking area having the uvb light on it and you also need the heat light but you need to make sure that the temperature of the basking area is correct so you're going to want to put a thermometer there and make sure the temperature is in the range that your turtle needs so you look up your turtle species and see what temperature the basking area needs and then you can raise this light or if you need to be hotter get a higher wattage light and raise and lower it to get the proper temperature on the basking area those things are very important if they don't have the proper basking temperature if they don't have the uvb lighting their health is not going to be good it's going to go down their shell is going to start rotting it's just not going to be good so other than that once there's one more thing i had to talk about here before we went through most of it um other than that i guess there's just food up here for food for turtles i simply use a turtle food this one i'm using currently and that's all they need to survive don't over feed lots of people will overfeed like crazy throwing in like 20 pellets a day that's going to make the water quality go down it's not going to be good for your turtle i just throw in a couple do a few pellets a day that's all they need you can also feed them insects the pellets like i said will keep them alive but it's good to feed them insects i feed mealworms super worms crickets you can feed some fruits and vegetables and you can feed fish now goldfish are not very healthy for turtles or anything that eats them really but they're okay as a treat here and there you can throw on feeder guppies or feeder minnows the rosy reds and those all are fine as well but basically if you have some turtle food at home you'll be good to go and just throwing that other stuff insects or whatever you know a couple times a month a couple times a week even just as much as you want to so again to recap pretty easy but you just need the proper tank set up and you need 10 gallons per inch of adult turtle shell so look up your species and see what you're going to need you need really good filtration i use this fluval u4 i really recommend underwater filters because hang on back filters don't work so good on turtle tanks because there's so much space at the top where there's no water even if it does work the filter is able to suck up the water it drops water and it makes a lot of noise so this is basically silent really recommend that check out the fluval u series of filters so other than the size the filter you need your 100 dry basking area with uvb and proper heat you do not need any lights at night just like in nature the sun goes down so at night as long as your house stays over 60 degrees shouldn't need any lighting at night they'll be just fine that's how it naturally is and that's just fine for them as you see i don't have a heater in the tank the water in this tank is proper temperature for him most turtle tanks won't need a heater but depending on your species depending on your house and how cold or warm the room that they they are in are you might need a heater so you're going to have to test your water temperature and if it's too cool for the species of turtle you have then you might want to throw in a heater as well other than that it's really about it it's just you just got to get a big enough tank proper filtration proper basking area with uvb and heat and after it's all set up they're pretty easy to care for not that expensive to care for but the initial setup you know is a little bit of cost to get all the correct parts so that's real quick and easy things you need if you're going to be owning a turtle if you guys have any questions let me know in the comments or you can also send me messages on facebook it's the same facebook name as my youtube name earthling1984 be happy to help you guys out and otherwise happy pet keeping we'll see y'all later you

Channel: Earthling1984

Views: 865,006

Keywords: how to care for turtles, pet turtle care, beginner, turtle, turtles, how to, cage, lighting, lights, light, heating, bask, basking, setup, tutorial, beginner guide, beginners guide, to, care, information, map, musk, painted, slider, uvb, heat, how, how to care for pet turtle, turtle care, turtle care sheet, turtle care video

Id: P9RmfBkSo-0

Length: 10min 3sec (603 seconds)

Published: Wed Jan 27 2016