Reptile & Amphibian Forums

What's the best type of rocks to use in a turtle tank? Looking for something that is easy to clean w/ a typical fish tank cleaner. My boyfriend has 2 mississippi mud's, and we used the typical aquarium gravel in the tank, but the small broken pieces make cleaning it well a pain. We were thinking of switching to larger rocks for the bottom. Any suggestions?

Also, is there a good way to keep algae out of the tank? He's added a pair of plecos to try and combat the algae, but they seem more interested in leftover turtle food than cleaning the tank :/

Last but not least ~ What's the best food option for mud's? We've been feeding these guys the sticks, but I read somewhere that those aren't best for them? We had tried feeder fish in the past, but those suckers would just breed and we'd end up w/ so many fish... and the turtles didn't eat them.

Thanks in advance for any help!

I don't use any rocks in my mud tank, I don't use any thing in my painted tank either. If the gravel is small they can swallow it & become impacted. If you really need something on the bottom then large river rock is best. Anything that they can't swallow.

As for food, I breed lobster & hissing cockroaches, my mud loves them. He eats crickets, grub worms, June beetles (in season)earthworms, night crawlers. Mealworms for treats.
He loves live fish, you can also use frozen fish foods (but thaw them for the turtles) even better if your local tropical fish store sells them live, things like bloodworms, brine shrimp, tubifex worms.
I feed mine some pellet food but not a lot because he got sick in 1997 & the vets concluded that part of his problem had to do with too much pellet food & not enough fresh live foods so now I rotate his foods. He never gets the same food 2 feedings in a row, he gets pellets once a week or once every 2 weeks.
Their nutritional needs haven't been scientifically studied like dog/cat nutrition has so feeding them foods similar to what they'd eat in the wild seems best. Mine got over his illness & hasn't been sick again since.
Variety, variety, variety seems to be the key.

PHRatz

Variety is absolutely the key for healthy turtles of any kind.
Mud/musk turtles are very forgiving in this respect but you should still feed them good things.
I feed high quality pellet foods for large tropical fish like cichlids or catfish. I also feed some of the better frozen foods for marine tropical fish that contain all kinds of algae, shrimp, clams, etc. Then, I will offer some live foods as well.
Many of the pellet foods and 'sticks' formulated for turtles are actually pretty lousy as a staple food. Feed them only as an occasional supplement.

As far as the bottom cover is concerned you can use larger aquarium river stones or 'Chattahootchee' type river rocks. These are fairly smooth and are mostly too large to be ingested.
I use pieces of corkbark wedged crossways in the aquarium for basking sites.

I agree that many of the stick foods are poor quality. If you read some of the labels, the ingredient lists can be appalling. One brand I tried once actually had feathers in it, I mail ordered it so I didn't know that until it got here.
What turtle eats feathers in the wild? Even the predators around my house pull the feathers out of their prey & leave a pile on the ground. lol
I also use the pellets as more of a treat, not a staple diet.
I've found over the years that once I started feeing more live food my yellow mud doesn't care much for any pellet food anymore, he'll take some now & then but he often turns his nose up at it.
Because we live sort of out in the country where the neighbors aren't too close and we can't treat the lawn with chemicals because of our grazing tortoise, I'm able to find a good variety of live insects outdoors aside from the ones I breed for him to eat.
I like that..
What species of muds/musks do you have?

PHRatz

I currently have three female red cheek mud turtles, Kinosternon cruentatum. But I have kept many other species over the years, K. leucostomum, bauri, scorpioides and flavescens. Also, musk turtles like S. minor and Staurotypus.