Koi and Turtles

[dario]

I am thinking of getting baby turtles to put in my koi pond. My pond has about 25 koi's and goldfish of different sizes. Will the baby turtles attack my fish? How fast do the turtles grow?

[Bern]

Hi,



I've seend turtles and Koi sharing a pond at Honolulu airport and also in an Embassy Suites Hotel near LAX. I saw them time and time again over a number of years so they can obviously co-exist if the temperature is suitable for both. So I guess that rules the UK out.



However, my reservation would be when it comes to the time for medicating the water. How would turtles react to say PP?



rgds BERN

[Andrew]

The turtles I have seen in Florida are vicious!

Any fish or birds that get near them are in danger, and they know it!

[MikeM]

Unless your pond is extremely large, I'd recommend against it. Red-ears are less vicious than many turtles, but they will go for the koi. (Notice in pet shops that they put feeder fish in for turtles to eat? Little baby red-ears will get to be 12" in diameter and can catch pretty big fish. Sometimes on dealer websites there will be photos with part of a pec missing. As often as not, it was bitten by a turtle.



About time for Brady to post his infamous turtle pics??

[aldonna]

Dario........I think I read you with a similar question on "another" board. I've thought over my answer since then.

Questions?: How valuable are your fish? Any of them your "favorites", yet? Ya want them to look good with chunks missing?

AFTER I got 2 of the cutestlookingpeacefulappearingslowestmovingcouldn' tmove fasterthanasnail I noticed one traveling by very quickly, attached to one of my 16"longfins tails!! ( I know I know. That's what all longfins are for!)

Don't do it. Try it out with a sacrificer first if ya just can't hold back. Everybody gets hungry sometime. :twisted: :twisted:

[shiromujigirl]

Turtles are fun, though. They need a pond just for themselves.



I bought a beautiful and expensive exotic little map turtle of some kind one summer and kept it in an 8 foot stock tank. One day I had cleaned the tank and was refilling it and forgot about it. The tank overflowed and the turtle washed out and escaped. A few days later, there it was in the wild pond just below the house sunning on a stick.



I HAD to get my turtle back. I desiged a trap based on the sunning habit. After a week I had my pretty little turtle back. A few months later I overflowed the pond again and it escaped. I recaptured it.



The third time it escaped I gave up on it. I am too stupid to keep a turtle.



There are red ear and other kinds of cooters in that pond. Once in a while still I see my turtle, its beautifully colored neck stretching up to catch some rays in the logstack of other turtles.

[luke frisbee]

Smeagol,

too stupid to keep a turtle...what is that? Forset Gump Dumb? Blonde? An old country saying (just made up) She's so slow she takes her pet turtle for a walk.

"too stupid to keep a turtle", now there's an image.



I used to have a few map turtles in my collection. In AL where I grew up some of the rivers had them. They had pale opaque pink eyes when they were young

[MikeM]

SMG: If you ever make it to Central Florida, skip Disney and go canoeing on the Wekiva or tubing on the Ichneetucknee (or even a short tube ride on Rock Springs Run). You'll find your turtles sunning on logs, and swimming along the sandy bottoms in aquarium-clear spring water. Even the evil heron is grand in that environment.

[luke frisbee]

SMeaGol,

You said "cooter"?! I guess this filter doesn't know all the slang.

[shiromujigirl]

I am going to put on my green cape, whistle my tall pale horse up out of the woods, find you and fill you full of (fake) arrows.



A cooter is a kind of turtle. There are all kinds of cooters. Look them up in a book. I have never heard the word used to describe anything but a turtle.