Fish Hunting

I found Slow and Steady fish hunting last night. I woke the turtles up while the fish were still asleep and Slow and Steady took advantage of this slowly (and I mean slowly) creeping up on the sleeping fish and then darting at them to try and catch them. Unfortunately as cute as my turtles are they're still very slow and the fish still get away.

Turtle Bum

Turtle Bum
Originally uploaded by GuOddian.

This great shot is of Steady's bum. My girlfriend Georgie took the photo.

The turtles are doing great, they really love the earth worms, but they only get them once a week at most. They're still getting the vitamins once a week inside their fish. Steady's shell is almost completely black again, Slow's shell is gradually getting better I think and harder as well.

We have a whole bunch of fish in there with them now. I bought a rainbow shark and a flying fox for my other tank as I had read they were placid fish. But they turned out to be agressive buggers so they live with my turtles now. They fight each other all the time too, but they're too fast for the turtles. There are also 20 feeder fish in there (Tiger Barbs and Rosy Barbs) but they're too fast for the turtles at this stage. They'll help filter the water and keep it clean though so I don't mind if the turtles don't eat them yet.

New Food

I was at the aquarium the other day and found a box of earthworms. After checking up on the nutritional content of these worms I fed them to Slow and Steady. They absolutely loved them and it was amusing to watch them eat these wriggling little worms. I'm going to feed them a few every now and then to give them a bit of variety. I'm also still on the lookout for a good reliable source of wood roaches but feel that I'll probably have the same problem with them as the crickets, they grow too fast and then die too fast as well when only feeding them a couple once or twice a week.

Australian Reptile Park

TurtleLogShell
Originally uploaded by GuOddian.

We went to the australian reptile park yesterday and had a look at the turtles there. They had lots of long necks, though all of them were outside. It was interesting the amount of green algae that had grown on their shells, also a shame that I don't have a picture to show as well. The Murray Rivery turtles and the Saw Shelled turtles that were outside had reletively clean shells in comparison, makes me wonder if this is a testiment to how much time the long necks spend in the water compared with the other species as the Murrays and Sawshells were all out on land basking where as half the long necks were swimming.

This shot is of slow basking on the log first thing in the morning.

Shell steadily improving

P3270004
Originally uploaded by GuOddian.

Well here is steady at the bottom of the tank. You can see his shell is steadily improving and that makes me very happy.

On another note the idea to chill the crickets a little before feeding was fantastic, worked a treat. I tried to take some photos of the crickets being munched but it's very difficult to get a good one so I couldn't post any of them.

I also bought some fish for my small tank. I was breeding guppies to feed to the turtles but I've found they grow too slowly so I've given up on that and just feed them frozen freshwater fish when they get fish instead. So my small tank is now housing silversharks, algae eaters and catfish (all quite young) along with the guppies that will, once large enough so the turtles don't eat them, be moved to the large tank with the turtles.

A turtle in the hand is worth...

Turtle Hand Shell
Originally uploaded by GuOddian.

Here you can see Slow (I really don't like that name, but I'll think of something better later) in my hand and his shell problems close up. In the background is Steady. As you can see Steady is looking a lot better and Slow is slowly getting better as well. Shell problems aside they're both going very well.

They really like sitting in my hand, they think its feeding time every time my hand goes near them. They jump into my palm thinking they're about to be moved to their feeding bucket. Quite friendly when they're not trying to eat you really.

I'll try to post a picture of them feeding next time they're fed (tomorrow).

Turtle Feeding is Messy

Bucket Turtle
Originally uploaded by GuOddian.

Well my camera is still shot so I'm posting an older photo. I feed them both out of the main tank in a 2 foot bucket show in the image. I feed them seperately from the because turtles are nutoriously messy eaters and they leave a lot of scrap food lying around. In the tank this would rot and pollute the water, in the seperate bucket it just gets tossed into the garden when they're done. It also gives me a chance to cycle the water and if it's during the day then I can put the bucket outside in the sun to give them their extra UV.

As an extra note, in this picture you can see the shell problem just starting to show itself. Just a slight discolouration and markings on the shell.