I have a striped mud turtle which ive had for aout 8-9 months now, which is housed in a 55 gallon aquarium with a southern paintd. The turtle is extremely shy and lazy, hiding in one spot on a shallow ledge under a peice of fake wood, making it difficult to get food to. I feed my painted in a separate container, because the painted would eat evry once of the mud's food if it had the chance. Is this normal mud behavior? Upon examining the mud, it is quite fat, altough i must say its an exteremely shy and picky eater. 1/2 the time i go to feed it, it gets scared and scurries to the corner of the tank and faces the wall, paying little or no attention to its food. Do they eat plants/debris from the bottom? perhaps it is nocturnal and roams about all night, but i doubt it. It just sits in the same sot, all day, all night. As far as the food, it usually accepts superworms and sinking shrimp pelets for fish. It wont eat floating turtle sticks, because the stiks foat away an the turtlis too shy or lazy to swim after them.
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lazy striped mud
Replies (5)
Yeah, that sounds about right. I have 4 mud turtles, 3 of which I got as babies, and the other I got as an adult. None of mine are very shy now, but at first they were, they are shy turtles in nature. It is hard for them to compete with the btter swimming turtles. If possible, try and lower the water in the tank, mine are in a tank to themselves with the water level low enough to where they can stick their nose out of the water without having to swim to the top. They are not good swimmers, and pretty much just like to walk on the bottom of the tank. Mine will bask on their rock occasionally, but not too much.
Actually, I have a new habitat in the works, a 120 gallon, open top paludarium type thing with lots of land, a huge shallow underwater ledge, and lots of little nooks for hiding. Perhaps it will become more free-spirited in that setting.
Hmmm, sounds interesting. Make sure to post pics!
Chris
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Hey whats up, I'm Chris and I currently have 1.0 Softy, 0.0.1 Midland Painted, 1.0 Bearded Dragon
Wow, that sounds like a neat enclosure. Do you have any pics?
Not yet, still under construction. will get some pics, though, soon as i set it up. then I'll have to figure out how to load pics on this thing. But will do so!
