Reptile & Amphibian Forums

This is one of my female redcheeks. Although she was pretty blah as a hatchling, she really colored up well. These photos are actually faded---her color is much more intense than the images show.

Same girl. She is just about breeding size now.

VERY nice indeed! Did you feed her brine shrimps as well, as I remember you mentioning before when you posted pics of a very red hatchling? If so, did you feed her that all her life? This is not that hatchling, is it?
I have three developing eggs right now from parents that are quite red (male faded somewhat with age)...I'm curious to see those hatchlings!

Yes, I feed this one and all my other mud turtles a lot of shrimp, krill and clams. I also feed Monster and Mazuri aquatic turtle pellets, the occasional earthworms and many other food items. Believe me, they are spoiled rotten.
This particular female is 4.5 inches now but as I mentioned, she was a fairly drab colored hatchling. The really red colored hatchling (see photo) is an older and larger female that I own. She has a mostly orange head and a pumpkin colored plastron now.
Sure hope your eggs hatch!

Where are redcheeks native?

Mexico to Costa Rica...roughly. There are a couple of subspecies involved though. At least I think so.

WOW compared to my olive colored Scooter that bright coloration is really different for me to see.
Beautiful turtle!!
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PHRatz

Sorry for the late reply Mayday, thanks for the info! If my eggs hatch I will definately try foods that are high in B-carotene: your animals look stunning! I do give my adults some beta carotene (for canaries) in the turtle jelly that I make.

Do you have any advice about incubating eggs of this species? I have had many eggs but most have proven infertile (no white band developed). I usually keep them at room temperature (65-77F) for 30 days to break diapause, then incubate them at about 85F. I had the first clutch of 4 develop in 2005 but these died in their shells, probably due to too high substrate humidity. This year, a clutch of 3 is developing this way, at lower humidity, but 3 others are not. I'm trying to think why I would have only 2 clutches out of 9 (each 2-5 eggs) fertile? All from the same female, the first fertile clutch was fathered by a different male though.
Any thoughts would be appreciated!

I am not aware of a diapause in tropical scorpioides complex mud turtles and I never kept mine cool. I would simply incubate my redcheek eggs along with my redfoot eggs at 83 to 85 degrees.
My guess is that you will do better with time.

Really? My first viable clutch never developed in the incubator (for about 60 days) until I put them in the cool basement for a month - afterwards, they immediately started to develop. I have heard from others that did it this way. Maik Schilde says in his (german) book that there are 'indications' that this species does diapause.
What is your hatching rate, if I may ask?
My latest clutch is in the incubator from day 1, but no banding again...I candled the developing clutch of three the other day, and saw movement...fingers crossed!

Regards,
Job
(Holland)

I also read where Schilde mentions diapause in the redcheeks but as I mentioned I never had heard that before. But then, I was breeding my redcheeks over 20 years ago and there was NO INFORMATION available at all.
While I have three adult females right now, I have no adult male and so my experiences are from a trio that I maintained years ago (1980 to 1989). I know that for the first couple of years I got no hatching and all of my eggs went bad. But then after about the third season I got nearly 100% hatch rate. In fact, I gave one of my females away as I was getting too many hatchlings to deal with....this was long before the Internet, reptile expos and reptile keepers being as connected as we are now.
But you raise a good question and I will ask a friend who is currently breeding cruentatum and see what he says. I am fairly sure that he doesn't do anything special for his eggs though.

Thanks for the info, Mayday. If you could ask your friend that would be much appreciated! A friend of mine has had good hatching rates, he kept the eggs cool for a month prior to incubating 'to break diapause', but then this does not necessarily mean that they were in diapause in the first place.

Attached some pictures of the pair. Too bad for you that you're not in Europe, by the way: I know some cruentatum males available...

Just got off the phone with my friend who produces the cruentatum. He does NOT cool them in any way and incubates them normally. He does mention that the eggs might sit full term and not hatch until he makes them quite 'wet'. This seems logical to me but I wouldn't call that diapause though.
He did say, and you probably already know this, that Staurotypus DO require a diapause.
I could obtain a wild caught male cruentatum here in the States fairly easily but I have been trying to get a nice captive hatched one. The frustrating part for me is that in the past four years I have bought about a half dozen and raised them up only to have them all be females!
Nice animals BTW...thanks for the photos.

Thanks a lot for asking! Really weird to always have been thinking that I should diapause them, and then find out I don't. I will be alert though: as I said before, my first clutch never started developing until I cooled them (and did show white bands). Maybe MOST clutches do not require diapause, just like Kinosternon baurii autumn ones apparently sometimes do, whereas spring clutches don't.
Maik Schilde says the same thing about increasing humidity at the end of incubation. That's another mindbreaker for me, as I suspect my first developing clutch to have 'drowned' close to hatching, as a result of the substrate being too humid (though not wet). Oh well...I'll see what happens with the current clutch.

I can relate to the problem of captive-bred males: hardly any CB male Kinosternids are available in Europe, either. The incubation temperatures that are used must all be too high...I am experimenting a bit with K. baurii and Sternotherus minor eggs, but it's much too soon to draw conclusions.

Thanks again!

>>I have three developing eggs right now from parents that are quite red (male faded somewhat with age)...I'm curious to see those hatchlings!

My male adult western painted has a tendency to fade. I don't feed a whole lot of pellet foods and there aren't many mine will even accept. One day I was reading the ingredients on the Jurrasi Diet aquatic turtle brand food, says it doesn't contain soy which can bind calcium, I thought hey sounds good I'll try it.
To my surprise my painted liked it. About a month later I noticed how much his color had deepened.. it must be that pellet.
You might try a small cannister of that brand & see what happens.
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PHRatz

Try your painted turtle on some shrimp and others foods that naturally contain beta carotids. These elements have been found to be necessary for tropical fish to maintain their red and orange colors and I bet they work on turtles too. In fact there are some other diet factors that are responsible for bright colors in tropical fish that I am sure would help turtles achieve their color potential as well.

I think it will & in fact after reading your post I picked up the Jurrasi container & it does list beta carotene on the ingredient list.

Pink flamingos have that pink color because of the shrimp they eat, it should work for turtles too.
I've fed both the aquatics frozen foods that contain brine shrimp, the don't care for the shrimp pellets but I can't find the live feeder shrimp that used to be sold in one of the pet stores here. They stopped carrying it.. but ya know a new fish store opened here.... I think I'll go take a look & see what they have.
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PHRatz

The scarlet ibis is another bird that requires crustaceans for their vibrant red color to be maintained.
As for turtles, I remember years ago when John Iverson wrote and told me that the plastron color of hatchling eastern muds was directly related to the diet of the female while she was forming the egg. That is why some hatchlings have bright orange plastrons while others are a dull yellow. But then there must also be some genetics involved as a friend who hatches many redcheeks each year gets both yellow and red plastroned babies from adults that are fed the same diet.
You can go crazy at a good fish store with the various foods for marine fish. Most turtles love all of them but they tend to be expensive and messy.