Similar to other reptiles, turtles are a suitable species to own and raise. If you have large furry animals as pets, providing them with medical care, food, and other needs tends to be high-priced. Contrary to that, turtle care takes less time, money, and is usually simpler. Of course this only happens if the turtles receive the utmost care in regards to their food, existing habitat, and protection to ensure a healthy and long life.

To ensure the safety and comfort of your pet turtles, you have to go over a few measures like providing ample room to live in, just enough lighting, clean water, and a basking lamp. If you want to disease-proof your pet turtle, you should always follow the following rules: proper temperature in the aquarium, good water quality, and regulated feeding habits. Your turtle’s aquarium must be filled 2/3 with water for swimming purposes, and the remaining 1/3rd should be spared for basking purposes. Add to this by bringing in a full-spectrum ultraviolet light source.

To protect your turtle from infections and lengthen its life, it is very important to keep the water contaminant-free. You can accomplish this including a water filter system in your aquarium. Algae can easy grow on a turtle’s shell. A strict regime must be followed when it comes to thoroughly cleaning the interiors as well as the exteriors of the aquarium. Although it’s sometimes sufficient to clean the tank once a month, it’s often better to do it twice a month.

Make sure you only feed your turtle turtle food and not anything else. Anything else might make them sick and invite illness onto them. Make sure that after each feed, you clean up all the leftovers so that bacteria does not enter the tank. Moreover, you don’t want to feed it too much because they can get sick from over feeding.

Don’t use tap water to fill your turtle’s tank. Tap water often has chemicals like fluoride and chlorine, which can cause some unwanted changes in your tank’s pH level. For swimming and drinking water, make sure all the water has been filtered to ensure that it is safe for the turtle.

Turtles are certainly interesting pets to raise, simply watch and interact with it. They will bring warmth and joy for you and your family, just make sure you provide it with a stable environment and lots of attention. With good care, turtles can live for decades. However, they are prone to illness so you must make sure you care for it using these tips and it will live a long time.

Tags: Fish

This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 19th, 2009 at 5:39 am and is filed under Fish. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.