Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Do alligator Snappers Grow faster than red eared sliders?

From what I read about ally snappers is if the are raised in the same conditions as in the wild they grow slow about a inch or two a year but if they are over fed they grow quickly but their health may be jeopardized.

i do agree that over feeding can jeopardize their health, it would with any animal. my ally grew about 4 inches a yr for the first 3 yrs ( that puts him at a 12 inch shell length) but only 5 inches over the next 3.5 yrs. he is almost 7 and is only like 17-18 inches!

i had no idea they grew that fast in 7 years. nice snapper. how much does he weigh?

i dont know, 20-30 pounds i guess. he/she is pretty heavy. im not good at guessing weight and i have never put him on a scale. any ideas if its male or female?

my guess is male, but at 7 yrs. he is sexually immature i would think. in a few more years you'll probably be able to tell for sure. i'm not sure he would have a 18" shell if he was in the wild at 7. a zoo keeper told me that a 17" ast is sort of like a (teenager} in the wild and hard to tell the sex. its harder to tell on ast than commons at an early age.

also john richards always said that most males have a tapered shell. wider in the back where as females have a more narrow straight shell.

I have a community tank with some turtles in it, mostly maps, painteds, muds, etc. Some were 5" long, most were 3"-5" long, except for a baby mud.
Slow growing, fairly benign species.
None of them would bite you on purpose.
I was cruising the local ditches for snakes one day, and stumbled on a basking snapper, couldn't have been a month old.
Quarter size.
Figured I'd do the locals a favor and take it home.
Within 3 months it ate more than the rest of the turtles put together, grew larger than any of them, and I worried about them as snappers are an agressive species.
It was friendly for the most part unless you were in the way of it's food, and would even bask under the activeUV bulb with the rest of the turtles, something I thought a snapper would never do.
Anyway, I had to let it go, as it was growing WAAAAYYYYYYY too fast to keep over the winter.
Well, I gave it a head start.
This was just a common snapper, AFAIK, as I live in michigan.

I guess the short answer is that if you kept a snapper with another species like a RES, map, or painter, the snapper would be a much more agressive feeder, and you would have to overfeed him to make sure the other turtle got any food. This would make the snapper grow WAAAAAAAAYYYYYYYYYYY faster than an inch a year. Prolly more like 3-4" per year.
It would soon be in a position to kill it's cagemate for sport.