Turtles eat fish. In captivity, turtles mostly eat commercially prepared food, however, some owners occasionally feed their turtles with feeder fish. Before you put fish in your turtle tank you need to set up the perfect conditions. What do I mean, when I say perfect conditions? Bigger tanks are easier to maintain, and as we know, aquatic turtles are very messy animals.
A bigger tank will serve another purpose, too. The bigger the tank is, the more space the fish will have. More space means less aggression over territory. Keeping fish combined with turtles will result in producing a lot of waste. Always keep that in mind. There are a lot of ways, but the best-case scenario is to introduce fish in a tank with a fully mature turtle. Their diet is mainly based on vegetables. However, if you keep young turtles, you need to be careful.
Feed the turtle well before you introduce the fish at the tank. To have a high survival rate in a turtle tank, a fish must possess certain characteristics. First, it must be fast.
Only fish that are quick enough can survive in a tank with a turtle that likes to hunt, such as the red-eared slider turtle, a common and popular pet turtle. Second, it must be a smaller fish. It may seem illogical, but hear me out.
Bigger fish are easier targets for turtles. Smaller fish are agile and quick enough to escape or to hide somewhere in the tank. Considering these characteristics, the best type of fish to start with will be some small school of tetras. They are fairly inexpensive, easy and available to find in most local fish stores. Other fish you can possibly put in your turtle tank are small types of African cichlids, such as yellow labs.
African cichlids are mostly known for their aggressiveness, however, they are known for their speed, as well. I have never wanted to experiment with the lives of those fish. Another option is to put guppies in your tank, however, I would not consider it as a good practice. Guppies can be easily eaten by the turtle, but on the other hand, they reproduce so fast, that you might not even notice that some of them are missing. Red-eared sliders are among the most common turtles kept as pets.
These turtles are omnivorous and feed on both plants and animals. Juveniles and pre-adults are pretty carnivorous. However, adults are more herbivorous. Adult males range from 5 to 9 inches while adult females can reach lengths of 12 to 13 inches. Adults generally coexist peacefully with large fishes.
Similarly, juveniles are unable to hunt large fishes. Red-eared sliders eat kale, carrot tops, parsley, swiss chard, endive, collard greens, and dark romaine leaves. In addition to this, offer them commercial turtle pellets. Check out the Red-eared Slider care guide for more on care. The second specials we will look at is the western painted turtles. As with any freshwater turtle, the western painted turtle is omnivorous. They reach lengths 4 to 10 inches. These omnivorous turtles feed on aquatic insects, crustaceans, ad small fish.
They do not hunt fishes that are as large as they are. While the young painted turtles are primarily carnivorous, adults are generally herbivorous. You can feed western painted turtles commercial turtle pellets, crickets, earthworms, mealworms, and dark leafy vegetables. Check out the Western Painted Turtle care guide for more on care. The pink belly sideneck turtle is another species that cohabitate with fish quite easily.
These grow to be 5 to 10 inches. As with the other turtles already mentioned, the pink belly sideneck turtle feed on small fish, insects, mollusks, crustaceans, and plant matter. Learn more about the Pink Belly Sidneck here. Mud and musk turtles are considered to be among the best species to house with fishes as they are quite uninterested in hunting fish. Also, they are not good at hunting fish.
Even in the wild, these turtles are ambush predators and hide in the muddy bottom for slow-moving water waiting to ambush prey. Learn more about mud turtles here and you can see other musk turtle care guides on the turtle species page. When choosing a fish for the aquarium, it is best to consider hearty fishes.
This ensures that they can survive alongside the omnivorous turtle. Fast fish are difficult to catch and turtles generally avoid hunting fishes that are as large as they are.
Here are some fish species to consider. These hearty fishes belong to the armored catfish family. They can grow up to 20 inches and as such are quite large. They are also quite fast and are well-protected by armor-like longitudinal rows of scutes that cover the upper parts of the head and body. They come in many delightful colors and patterns.
These are colored variants of the species C. They are generally kept for decorative purposes in ponds and water gardens. Popular colorations include white, cream, black, blue, red, yellow, and orange. These fish can grow to be quite large, up to several feet. They are also swift strong swimmers. The pictus catfish Pimelodus pictus is another fish generally housed alongside turtles. They are quick and speedy fish that can grow up to 5 inches.
Turtle species have trouble catching them because of their speed. The pictus cat belongs to the catfish family Pimelodidae. The neon tetra Paracheirodon innesi is another species popularly kept with turtles. They are brightly colored and speedy. When not fed properly, they will destroy plants in the tanks.
However, their lighting quick speed makes it near impossible for a turtle to catch. The guppy is another species you can keep with turtles. Because of this, I would not recommend relying on water-plants to act as hiding places for your fish. Certain species of turtles are way more adept and skilled at hunting down and eating fish than others. Other species, such as mud and musk turtles, are not nearly the skillful hunters as sliders, nor do they seem as interested in hunting.
Therefore, there is much more flexibility in terms of what fish you can put in a musk turtle tank. Some good suggestions for fish to live with musk turtles include: Tetras, Guppies, Angel fish, and Zebra fish. Believe me when I tell you that introducing a school of fish into a tank with a juvenile red-eared slider is a recipe for disaster! As sliders and painted turtles get older, they start to eat a lot less protein and a lot more veggies and greens.
When this happens, there is a good chance that your turtle will be less likely to see the fish as a source of food. Check out this article to find out how much does a turtle cost. There are fish that simply do not work well with turtles and a much smaller amount of fish that can.
All of the species I have ever seen that have worked well with turtles have had several of the following traits:. There are 3 species of fish that I have found work well with most common pet turtle species. They are:. For someone who has never added fish to a turtle tank, I would strongly recommend starting out with a small school of tetra or zebrafish.
For one, both of these species are quite cheap. They are also pretty easy to get, as your local pet store probably has them. Both of these species only grow to between 1 and 2 inches in captivity, but more importantly, they are freshwater fish that are sleek, quick, speedy and have a bit of smarts.
Introducing a small school of either species is a good way to test the waters literally and see how your turtle will react, and how long your fish will live. Once you have a bit of success with any of those species, you can start to consider adding something like a yellow cichlid.
Yellow cichlids are from Africa, can thrive in aquariums, get a bit bigger around 4 inches , look absolutely stunning but perhaps most importantly, are just the right amount of feisty! Note: I am ONLY talking specifically about electric yellow cichlids labidochromis caeruleus and not any other cichlid species, including but not limited to:. Cichlids in general are very territorial, and can become very aggressive, particularly when they are mating.
For this reason, if you do decide to add a few yellow cichlids to your tank, I would recommend only adding a few. A group of fully-grown, aggressive cichlids can easily turn the tables on your turtle and injure it. Basically, you will want to avoid putting anything that is too aggressive, or anything that can potentially injure, main or kill your turtle in the same aquarium. With that being said, are there any other species that can live with turtles? Here are my views on some of the more common species.
The reason for this is that many tropical fish have very long tails and fins, and otherwise attract a lot of unwanted attention to themselves. At some point or another, your turtle is going to get curious and take a nip at any type of fish that you add to your tank, tetra, zebra and cichlid included.
The tetras and zebras will quickly escape, as will the cichlids, or at the very least, fight back and give your turtle pause to give chase. Koi fish can work well with turtles, but I would still not recommend them over other species such as zebras and tetras. For starters, they can be expensive to purchase, and if you purchase a baby Koi fish, there is a good chance that all you will have done is give your turtle an expensive gourmet dinner meal.
Secondly, Koi fish can grow really big. They can easily grow to sizes much bigger than your turtle. If you have something like a pond habitat, they will probably work really well, but less so for most indoor aquariums. Along with turtles, there are plenty of other suitable turtle tank mates.
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