Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I have had a new turtle for 3 weeks now and has been seperated from my other one. Can I now introduce them to one another? Thanks and God Bless
Debbie

There are many different viewpoints on this subject. Some say a few weeks some say months. Either way I would be a bit reluctant to put animals together this quickly without having fecal samples checked for parasites at the very least. I kept my tortoises apart for 3 months and had the new one wormed and re-examined before they went together.
It is your decision to make. But is always best to be as cautious and thorogh as possible (within reason) before exposing animals to each.

the other side to this waiting thing is... introducing them to each other! the longer they are alone... the more they might like it, which may make putting them together harder. This is what i thought about whenever i put my turtles together after a few weeks of keeping them seperated! dont know if that's right or not... but it's what i did!
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~ Evie

Pets:
German Shephard {Dusty}
German Shephard/Collie mix {Shadoe}
2 RES turtles {Booger and Snot}
African Clawed Frog {Bingo}
Snail {Gary}

It's kind of a hard call. There are things that actually can lay domant and undetected in your turtle for years and years and then a little stress can cause an epidemic. So months of quarantine would not even help such a situation. It is best to have some test run at least to get a basic idea of whether or not the turtle is healthy and a moderate quarantine time.

As far as waiting the turtles, generally speaking, will not be affected by the wait time. The best way to introduce them to eachother is to put them both in a new tank set up at the same time. If you put the new one in the old one's tank their maybe some territorial issues.

I have introduced turtles to eachother (a five year old male diamond back terrapin and a 21 year old female) that had never seen another turtle their entire lives. They where thrilled to be with another animal and just spent days sniffing and checking eachother out. Needless to say you know what happened next and I have eggs in an incubator now!

Steve