Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I have my 3" common snapper set up in a kiddie pool with a top and drainage holes on the side for when it rains. In the pool I have water lettuce, duckweed, water hyacinth, rocks, and a small filter. I have noticed that on the bottom of the pool there are spots of algea that look like little slugs but don't seem to be like a water animal. 2nd there are also tiny worms swimmin around in the pool too, like really small they look like nematodes. I know nematodes are a health risk with snakes and lizards but what about turtles. If you are able to answere any of these questions or have a comment of your own that might help me pleas respond. He is indoors as of two days ago because of storms moveing in. Thanks

I'd like some feedback on this also

My 6 smaller Ali snappers are indoors in clean aquariums where they have been their whole life.
Next year we want to move them outdoors for the summer in a custom pond. Really cool and big .

Now I know these guys live in swamps naturally and I'm sure there's all kinds of weird things growing in there. Is that a problem when they haven't been exposed to that?

Last year my daughters kiddie-pool was left up for a couple of weeks in the backyard and I couldn't believe all the really stange worms and creatures that were in there.Some of them were really creepy looky slimy stuff. It was totally over-run with stuff that. I would never want to stick my turtles in. We plan on having some filtration. And screens over it part of the time to keep most of the big leaves and stuff out.

Anyone have any experience with this?
I would really apprecite it

These are most likely insect larvae of various types of flies and mosquitos and such. There are a few things you can do to help this. I would recommend simply dropping in some fish from the bait store, like minnows and mosquito fish. They will help clean up the place of small larvae while giving the turtle a healthy meal on occasion. Another fish you can add would be a chinese algae eater. Those suckers eat a ton of algae and grow fast to be pretty efficient. They are also extremely quick and should survive quite well with the turtle.

so basically, swallow the spider to catch the fly

Thanks for the feedback guys. Thats kind of what I thought.
I also talked to John Randleas ( Turtleman ) today.
He said about the same thing. They have all that stuff where these guys naturally come from.
I always feed minnows and shiners anyway. He said I could thow in some smaller fish like guppies . They'll keep a lot of that gone and probobly will survive the larger turtles. I'm not going to do it till next spring anyway.