Reptile & Amphibian Forums

my turtle has - after realizing he had a basking stone - found a new game. what he does is climb onto his basking stone, then he plops back into the water. he then swims to the opposite end of the tank, goes back to the stone, climbs up, and slides off again. he does this repeatedly. i've seen him do it up to 3 times in quick succesion. im sure when he alone and no ones is home or perhaps at night, he may do it even more. it seems a natural activity seeing as how they ARE called Red Eared SLIDERS, but never-the-less, i thought i would mention it. if it's not a natural activity, why would he be doing it. any thoughts, advice, or comments would be greatly appreciated.

p.s. here is his current tank.

My painted turtle does the same thing, except he does not swim all the way across his tank to do it again he just does it again. He will climb up onto his turtle dock, walk the length of it and dive head first into the water off the side of the dock. He then circles around to climb back up onto the dock to do it again. He can do this for hours and not get tired of it. He also plays in his filter outlet. He will swim through the stream of water coming out of the filter outlet pipe so that he can be pushed by the stream of water, to the bottom of the tank. Then he circles around and does it again. He can do this for hours as well. He also does the mating ritual to his big rocks at the bottom of his tank, but only to one particular one (out of like 100). It's a tiger eye looking one. I don't know why and am afraid one day he will get so into it that he forgets to come up for air lol. He plays this "game" the most often lol.

I've heard of some people even adding toys to the tank, such as rubber duckies, to give their turtles something interesting to observe or puch around. I'd make sure that whatever is added is too hard to be bitten through!

Do either of you have any hiding spots in the tank? Artificial silk plants (even from the dollar store) liven up a tank, and most turtles like to hide in them. Caves made from plastic shoe boxes (or from Gladware for smaller turtles) are a big hit, too. Leave the lid on, use a hot knife to cut a hole in the side, and use a piece of slate or flat stone on top to hold it under water. You can use aquarium sealer to attach the stone if you are worried about it falling off.

Katrina

I've heard of this activity many times also..

but the thing that concerns me is that your water is terribly cloudy. Keep in mind that this turtle drinks that water, and providing him clean water will be much healthier.