Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I have a 289 gallon pond in my sunroom that contains/contained the following:
Pink-bellied side neck - Emydura subglobosa
Redeared sliders, adluts and juviniles
Missippi Maps
Painted turtles
A diamond back terrapin
A reeves turtle
a small afican side neck
a florida softshell
a yellow mud
I think thats all.... and my turtles are all getting bites out of them, and their shells, and I just found my small african side-neck decapitated... very upsetting.. I would really like to know the culprit... anyone have any ideas??? thanks!

My guess would be the sliders. I think with that many kinds of turtles in together you couldn't help but have problems.
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Eryx - All the fun of a boa in a convenient pocket size!

thanks, I had pulled the pink belly side neck, and the adult sliders last night because they were the only ones with heads big enough to do that, so I will just keep the sliders seperate.

Wow...do you have a picture of this setup to show us!? It sounds quite big and interesting!
Tanzee

My pond has a tetra pond barrel filterm a UV sterilizer, spiderplants for biological filtration, a UV flourscent bulb, and a basking light on timers...

Hi -

Not sure of the size of your softshell turtle but I can promise you that it will become a nipper too. You shouldn't really keep it in with the combination of animals that you have. Softies have different requirements than the other turtles.

What are the demensions of your pond?

Good that started taking out the likely culprits in the decapitaton incident. Just keep a careful eye though that it isn't some other bugger doing the deed.

Mixing species from different continents is not always the best practice. I myself have a pond with mixed species in it but all live within eachothers range here in the U.S.

Your set up is nice I would just create another like it and at the very least split the numbers you have in this one in half.

my guesses would be in the following order:

florida softshell
sliders
diamondback (if a its female, never if its male)

but you have another problem.
i don't know the shape of that pond (and hence its surface area) or how large the turtles are but it sounds like way to many turtles for the enclosure.
and some are really inappropriately housed
(fro example aflorida softshell and a reeves have pretty differetn requirements)and of course crwoding is one of the main causes of turtle aggression among captives
(after sex and food competition)

I should mention that this pond is just the sliders, painted, and mud turtles winter habitat, they go outside in the spring, and the others stay inside, so there are only about 6 turtles that stay inside year round. I pulled the female res. and the soft shell is getting his own home shortly.

groovey