Is tank cycling necessary for turtles first time?

mumof2

didn't see this mentioned anywhere, but just read the cycling sticky and thought I'd better ask. thanks

Cookie_Monster

while not as important cos they breath air I still would have thought the excessive ammonia in the water would still stress them out and do them no good...

godtabh

i'd go with that as well

Amonina burns and affects breathing of fish (and most animals) so I'd its good to have but not sure if you could put a turtle in straight away or not.

No harm cycling tank

Wibbs

Well your mileage may vary but Ive never cycled a turtle tank in nearly 30 years of keeping them. So long as filtration is good and partial water changes are relatively regular it shouldnt be an issue. You would want some level of ammonia going on to stress turtles unduly(to the degree where you would smell it). They're not fish nor even close to as sensitive. With softshells, fly river turtles** and some other species I would be more careful, but for the more common sliders it's not nearly so much an issue IMHO.

Setting up a new tank I'd add water that has been standing a while to bleed off excess chlorine or add a dechlorinator(Chlorine will kill off good bacteria as far as biological filtration is concerned). A tiny bit of marine salt can help to stop any fungus growth. With species like diamondback turtles that's a given. It helps softshells too. If you try to cycle a tank and keep the parameters like a freshwater fish tank as far as nitrates/nitrites/ammonia with adult turtles you'd want one helluva body of water and serious filtration. You're gonna get far more spikes as they're inherently more "dirty" animals. Someone I know put a quite large slider in his freshwater tank and two things happened; one he lost fish as the turtle saw them as nice snacks and he lost fish because the turtle spiked the parameters.

Of course because (adult and well fed) turtles are incredibly resilient little buggers* it's very easy to get lazy with them. They'll not sicken in an obvious way but they wont be happy campers either, so fair play to you as you're being very thorough. So do the cycle, but dont be to concerned with spikes as the tank and your turtles establish.



*I rescued one from a pet shop 18 years ago that had been bitten in the leg by another to the degree that you could see the leg bones and it was clearly infected with only a 2 or 3 mm strip of tissue joining the top part of the leg to the bottom. Within a month of keeping her in her own tank and well fed and temp slightly higher than normal, the tissue grew back. Muscle and skin, the lot. I'm looking at her now and no scar. :eek:


** not a good species for the home setup unless you've got a huge tank and really know what you're doing

mumof2

Wibbs wrote: »

They'll not sicken in an obvious way but they wont be happy campers either, so fair play to you as you're being very thorough. So do the cycle, but dont be to concerned with spikes as the tank and your turtles establish.

Thanks for your genuine help - really appreciate hearing from someone who has looked after turtles for 30 yrs:) I'd say its a very rewarding hobby!

I'm getting the musk turtles, so not sure how much of a spike they will introduce, but wont be adding the turtles for about another 4 weeks. Will get the tank end of this week and start setting it up:D

Thinspired

I entrusted a pal with my two musks for a week while I went on holiday last year and when i came back there was actually a solid layer of gunge on top of the water, filter totally clogged etc...not a bother on the turtles though so I guess they're extremely hardy! I was gagging cleaning the tank out though, it was shocking.

Upgraded last winter to a 180L tank along with two yellow-bellied sliders and I've never checked levels of anything - I just keep an eye on the fish. Have a couple of tetras and a few mollies in there plus a catfish, started out with 8 of them 12 months ago and now have 5 but none of the losses were due to bad water quality (no prizes for guessing what happened to them - the musks weren't to blame though).

I figure if the fish start getting sick or dying off that's when I need to do something about water quality. At the moment they're growing away and the mollies have had a few babies, although they didn't last long.
Maybe it's cruel to use them as my litmus test for water quality but it seems to work!

I stir up the bottom once a week and hoover about a quarter of the water out from the bottom, only do a full empty once every three months and even then I keep about 30 litres of old water back. Have two filters running and change one every 4-5 weeks (lazy I know).

Your musks will be fine, they're extremely hardy and mine always seem happiest when they're digging in the gravel and they find a nice big lump of dirt to sample. They absolutely HATE it when I clean the tank out and there's nothing to salvage.