From No More Homeless Pets Forum - 3/17/05

Ideal habitats for happy turtles

Question from Vikke:
Thanks again for this excellent forum. We have a Reeves turtle, a species originally from the shallow marshes & paddies of southern China/Korea region of Asia. We adopted him from a kid who was going off to college & couldn't/didn't want to take Turtle. I don't know for sure how s/he got to the US but I doubt it was pleasant.

Turtle's habitat is a black rubber tub (about 4 feet long, 3 feet wide and 1 foot high) with about 5-7 inches of water. We've had years of difficulty getting a proper filtration system to work. We were told plants growing in the top would uptake nutrients & help naturally filter the water but no plants survived very long.

Can you please recommend an ideal filtration system for a large, shallow tub-style habitat? What should we put our efforts into making work? Also, what kind of temperature is ideal for this turtle? S/he's pretty active in the warm months but more mellow during the winter.

Are there any additional environmental elements we could add that would help make it more natural? Turtle likes to scrabble around & live plants likely wouldn't last long but I'd be willing to try if you could suggest some. There's a sizeable rock island in the middle of the tub for Turtle to sunbathe on but otherwise it's kind of stark.

Response from Dr Mark Burgess:
Turtle care and husbandry is a long, complicated discussion. We won't even go into diet here. But in general, with semiaquatic turtles, you should provide an environment that is approximately 1/2 water and 1/2 land; this will encourage the turtle to spend a lot of time out of the water basking. This is important both to dry the shell between bathings (minimizing risk of shell infections) as well as to allow the body temperature to warm after bathing. Heating the water can help minimize the body temperature dropping while bathing; but heated water grows bacteria even faster when soiled. A simple setup is to have about 1/2 the enclosure be a large water container, such as a wide tupperware container at least 6 inches deep.. the water is filled close to the rim. The other 1/2 of the enclosure can be filled with dirt or large gravel (too big to swallow)...which is raised to the level of the rim of the water container. A wood or rubber ramp can help the turtle climb out of the water container if needed.

If desired, a wood or plastic retaining wall can be put in to hold the dirt or gravel in place, allowing the water container to be easily removed for water changes and cleaning.

Keeping water clean is usually done in one of 2 ways: 1) change the water every day or 2-- much easier with a removable water container as described above 2) A large aquarium filter system as used in big fish tanks. Many reptile owners have been successful with either one of these methods.

Air temperature should be in the low 80's in the day, low 70's is ok at night. The temperature needs to be measured with a good thermometer (not a color strip) at various points in the cage. The most accurate temperatures are taken in the shade, or as far away from any heat sources as possible. Temperatures taken under or near a heat light will give falsely high readings. The only way to get an enclosure warm enough is to 1) heat the surrounding room to 80 F or higher or 2) have an enclosed cage. You can't heat your house with the windows open and roof missing; you also can't heat a cage much above room temperature with the cage wide open. You need some air ventilation, but not a lot. If you live in a drier area of the country, enclosing the cage also helps increase humidity. Obviously if you live in Florida, or many parts of the deep South, heating and humidity may be lesser concerns. But in cooler or drier areas, such as the Northwest where I practice, we see turtles every Winter and early Spring who are lethargic, or not eating well, or have respiratory infections, mainly due to seasonal stresses such as low temperatures, low UV levels, short day length, etc.

Besides heat, lighting also plays a role in keeping a turtle active and eating through the winter. Even turtles who may hibernate in the wild are often kept active year around in captivity, due to the difficulty many owners have in performing proper hibernation techniques for their pet (it typically can't be done well indoors, for one thing). It's often safer just to keep the pet active all year.

Be sure the light levels stay high; this means provide at least 12 hours of bright light daily even in the winter. Also ideally provide ultraviolet light, specifically UV-B, which requires a specialty reptile fluorescent light (such as Reptisun by Zoomed) kept close to the pet (usually within 18 inches) and replaced every 6-8 months. UV light helps stimulate good appetite, and assists in activating Vitamin D3 which is important in absorbing dietary calcium. Alternatively, you can use a mercury vapor bulb, which gets hot but covers a pretty good area (out to 2-5 feet depending on bulb size, brand, etc... no one knows exactly what the limits on these bulbs are as yet).

Managing heat and light properly keeps reptiles from becoming too passive or even ill in the winter, and stimulates good appetite and good immune function. The environmental setup (and diet) are the first things we look at with any reptile who isn't behaving normally or is ill.

Diet is another discussion; suffice it to say we see even more problems with many reptile diets than we do with their environment. This is due partially to propagation of much dietary misinformation by pet stores, and on the Internet, and even in reptile enthusiast magazines.

I hope this is useful to you; good luck w/ your shelled friend!

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