Respectfully, I couldn’t agree less with regards to hatchlings. A smaller tank allows you to more easily monitor the conditions the turtle is kept in. Things such as food intake, and temperatures, etc are all easier to monitor in a smaller tank. You simply cannot recreate the wild in a glass tank. A hatchling turtle in the wild utilizes a specific subset of the larger environment. They look for places that offer shelter from predators and an abundance of food. In most cases this is found along the margins of a large body of water in a marshy or swampy section for instance, not in deep water. These micro habitats are usually teeming with food that a hatchling can easily find and capture.

You can’t recreate that, even in a 1000 gallon aquarium and it would be pointless to try. As a tank for an adult turtle, it’s great, but it really doesn’t help with the husbandry requirements for an animal the size of a quarter. How do you insure it finds and eats enough for instance? In a small tank it’s easy enough to see how much they have eaten, but in a larger tank uneaten food just gets lost.

I keep hatchling painted, and other species of turtle, in 5 or 10 gallon tanks with water that’s deep enough for them to reach the surface if they stretch on their hind legs. I’ve done this for years and when moving them to larger tanks as they grow, I’ve never had a turtle forget how to swim.

I think for adults, a large tank is an absolute must, but for a hatchling it’s overkill and counterproductive for taking care of it’s needs.

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