Any turtle people on here?

[porkosta]

Hi all,

I have 2 young ELN's and last night I discovered white spot on a couple of the fishes within the tank that they are housed in. In the past (before I had the turtles) this wasn't a drama as I would simply treat the water and entire tank with White Sort remedy. Now that I have turtles I am not sure if this is safe to do with them in there.

Has anyone had this issue before? Is it safe to treat the fish if the turtles are in the same water?
All other waters levels are fine e.g. PH and anything else that the test kits measure.

The turtles are only a few months old and I have no other problems with them or anything else until I noticed the spots on the fish last night. The fish in question are Bristlenose sucker fish - these guys are a decent size as they were in the tank before I converted it from a cichlids setup to the turtle setup (removed the cichlids and left only safe fish).

Thank you in advance,
Andy

 

[JAS101]

can u take the affected fish out and treat them then ? then once better put back in with the turtles.

 

[FAY]

Ummm I do not like fish in with baby turtles, they tend to nibble on them.
I personally would separate them. Not sure about that treatment of the water would affect the turtles though.

 

[-Peter]

When you say the PH is fine, is it fine for the fish or the turtles. They aren't necessarily compatible. ELN's do better with the addition of aquarium salt to the water.

 

[Raymonde]

Ummm I do not like fish in with baby turtles, they tend to nibble on them.
I personally would separate them. Not sure about that treatment of the water would affect the turtles though.

I think sucker fish would be ok, as they eat algae off the surfaces in the tank, or rather it will be ok till the turtles get big enough to eat them, then watch out sucker fish

Not sure about the effect of the treatment on the turtles... Have you tried asking on the Australian Freshwater Turtles forum? Although there are heaps of people here that also keep turtles, all the people on that forum keep turtles and there are turtle experts which frequent AFT but are rarely online on APS.

Edit: oh i see you already went on AFT forum, hopefully they will reply soon

 

[GeckPhotographer]

It would be much easier to take the turtles out for a few days and treat the fish. Why go to the trouble of taking the fish out when you need to treat the water and turtles can A) Survive out of water for extended periods, and easily be kept in a small body of water for a short time. and B) turtles are easier to translocate.

 

[porkosta]

Thank you Everyone.

I am raising the water temp over the course of the week form 26 degrees to 30 degrees and maintaining that for a few weeks. This will kill off the infection on the fish and not affect the turtles in the process.

 

[Tsubakai]

Some salt will help too and won't bother the turtles. I've used melafix/pimafix with turtles without issues before (won't help much with the white spot but will help with secondary infections) Most of the white spot remedies are safe too but I've used them before at half-dose every second day (rather than full strength every 3 days) with success and this helps minimize the toxicity. Raising the temp will help the white spot life-cycle go more rapidly but you need some sort of treatment in the water to kill it off - higher temps alone are not enough although high temps and salt treatment may be adequate.

Bristle nose will eventually have to come out though as when the turtles get big enough to eat them they can lodge in the oesophagus by flaring out their gill spikes thus killing your turtle. The only fish you should have in with ELN are ones you are expecting to get eaten eventually.

 

[longqi]

Thank you Everyone.

I am raising the water temp over the course of the week form 26 degrees to 30 degrees and maintaining that for a few weeks. This will kill off the infection on the fish and not affect the turtles in the process.

If its ich youve got running at 30C wont kill it
Apart from chemicals the only effective treatment is 10% salt maintained for 7 days minimum

 

[tyson001]

i had kinda same prob this morning i woke up and one of my fish was covered in mould in my turtle tank i have baby elns to just wondering what wou feed i feed these baby turtle dinners from the pet shop and feeder fish.

 

[porkosta]

Tsubakai - The turtles are the size of a 50 cent coin atm and the Bristlenose as 12cm+. They will be coming out but are not a risk as the turtles are not looking at them as food. I have Neons, guppies and mollies in there to breed and become live food. I will try the half strength remedy method if you say it works for you. Did you use a certain brand?

longqi - Are you talking about Turtle salts in this case?

tyson001 - They are not fed prepackaged turtle dinners. They are feed bloodworms, blackworms and brine shrimp for now. I also suspect that they may have been taking a couple of neon tetras as their numbers have dropped somehow...