Reptile & Amphibian Forums

My sister lives in Florida and has her Alligator Snapping turtle set up in a 55 gallon aquarium with a tank mate, a red eared slider. The turtles are both about 5 inches long. I told her that eventually the alligator snapper would eat the other turtle. But she said that they get along fine and have no aggession towards each other. She said that she has been to animal exhibits at Aquariums and Zoos and they house snappers with other turtles and even once saw an exhibit where they had a couple of six or seven foot alligators sharing a exhibit with turtles. I told her that she was taking a chance and waiting for an accident to happen. what say ye all. Thanks for any input Jack.

First, I agree with you.

Second, I wonder about the zoo enclusures that house multiple species like that. This is pure speculation but they're probably larger than 55 gallons and allow the animals pleny of space for the smaller creatures to stay out of the paths of the larger ones.

It may very well be ok but it would be a pity for the slider to have a leg nipped off by the snapper, or worse. Like you said, seems like a risk.

Reminds me of someone on the leopard gecko forums telling me it was ok to house my geckos in my ball python's terrarium. I'm extremely skeptical that would have been safe, but even if it was, doesn't seem like a risk work taking.

The Steinhart Aquarium at the California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco has a KILLER display right inside the front door with a couple of adult American alligators, several adult alligator snappers, and many other turtles (sliders,cooters, etc.) All seem to live in peace. Keep in mind though, this is a BIG enclosure giving them all plenty of room to stay out of each others way!

..enough room i think it is realistic to keep them together, but even there, you're going to lose one here and there. As far as keeping them in a 55g aquarium, thats just not realistic. its only a matter of time. I HAD 2 common snappers housed together, and one day one decided to kill and begin eatting the other. They were well fed, no agression towards each other untill that point, but it still happened. Now my snapper lives alone and will continue to do so for the rest of her life ha.

But hey, look on the bright side, after it eats the RES you wont have to feed it for a few days... FREE FOOD!
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- Mike Fourquet

Cloaca Herpetoculture
www.CloacaHerps.com

I am of the belief that as long as the turtles are well fed and of the approximately the same size that they can be tank mates, but as my sisters turtles grow, her ally snap will soon get much larger than her tank mate and then he may become a snack. When you say that you had two snappers in the same tank and one day out of the blue one up and killer the other you didn't say if they were the same size or not? If they were the same size was one more aggressive towards the other all of a sudden? The scenerio I see is that possibily one of your snappers may have unexpectedly died and the other just did what comes naturally and fed on the available carrion. That is if there was no sign of aggressive behavior before hand. Just my 2 cents Jack

things:
I strongly believe the RES will eventually get it.
Espicially when the snapper get so much bigger (though this could be awhile).
but i dont think it will take that long at all, i wouldet be suprised by some sudden agression while they are still pretty close in size.
I have observed a common snapper take a bite out of its injured (I dont know how originally) sibling of the same size, and they got alone fine before, so i have no trouble takeing what somone said (my apologies, terrible at remembering screennames) about the snapper eating its tankmate.

>>My sister lives in Florida and has her Alligator Snapping turtle set up in a 55 gallon aquarium with a tank mate, a red eared slider. The turtles are both about 5 inches long. I told her that eventually the alligator snapper would eat the other turtle. But she said that they get along fine and have no aggession towards each other. She said that she has been to animal exhibits at Aquariums and Zoos and they house snappers with other turtles and even once saw an exhibit where they had a couple of six or seven foot alligators sharing a exhibit with turtles. I told her that she was taking a chance and waiting for an accident to happen. what say ye all. Thanks for any input Jack.

2 (still growing) turtles at 5 inches each are too big to be kept in a 55 gallon. They really should be in something like a 70-100 gallon setup minimum at this point in time.. larger if it can be done.

When there is enough room/space for the turtles and they are well fed, there should not be much of a problem of them being kept together. The only real issue would likely involve at feeding time. Where I work, for several years, we had a 22-inch, 35-40 lb allisnap living in a large indoor pond with many other turtles of mixed species. We never had problems with him going after the other turtles except once. We had a fairly new 4 inch spotted turtle who was a daredevil that liked to play "extreme games" (i.e., stealing food literally out from under the snapper). Most of the time he was fast enough to grab a chunk of the snapper's fish and take off with it. Extremely funny watching the snapper chase the spotted round and round and round the pond before the snapper either gave up and went to go get a different piece of fish or the spotted got tired of holding on to his stolen piece and would drop it. Unfortunately, one day he either wasn't careful enough in his judgement of timing or just wasn't fast enough to scoot through the open jaws of the snapper as the snapper went to pick his hunk of fish off the bottom of the pond... he lost his head.

Eventually the snapper got too big to keep in the setup and was sent to a breeder/keeper to use for educational programs and breeding program. You know you got a monster turtle when it can push 75-150 lb rocks around with ease lol. We were in the process of re-doing the pond to add in a dirt island to replace the large rock island and had to go with smaller landscape rocks.. the snapper would have destroyed the set up in a single night if we had kept him.

Below is a photo of the pond (post-revamp)... The 8-sided below ground indoor pond measures 11 feet across diameter at the bottom and the sides slant outward. Each side is about 4 feet long at the bottom and 5 feet at the top. The depth of the pond is about 4 feet but we tend to only keep about 18 inches of water in it (helps prevent most people from reaching in easily to steal smaller turtles). The top part of the pond is done up as wooden benches where people can sit and look down on the turtles.

To give you an idea of the scale of the pond, the river cooter basking on the rocks is 10 inches long and the two big redbellies in the water are 10 & 13 inches long.

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PHWyvern