What is bare tank turtle farming? Why a bare tank?

With the growing maturity of the turtle market, players are becoming more and more skillful in raising turtles, with a wide variety of rearing methods and techniques emerging. Crawling in the previous work specifically introduced green water turtle, mud water turtle, and a variety of filtration, such as: drip filtration and swamp filtration and so on. Today, I’d like to talk to you about one of the simplest and easiest ways to keep turtles in a bare tank. Why say “seemingly”? Because there is a big article here.

First of all, what is bare tank keeping? The so-called bare tank keeping is a way of keeping without filtration equipment, bottom sand, green plants and other tools to increase the diversity and stability of the environment. This way may seem simple, but technically speaking, the premise of bare tank feeding needs to have some prerequisites, if you don’t take these conditions into account, then bare tank feeding is no different from raising turtles in a water bowl. So what are the prerequisites for bare tank rearing?

temp

In fact, no matter which kind of keeping method (including mud water and green water keeping), the control of temperature and the prevention of temperature difference are the most basic operation skills that all turtle keepers need to have. Therefore, in order to avoid the disease caused by temperature difference, so bare tank keeping needs a large enough water body (the length of the tank should be more than 40cm), relying on the specific heat capacity of the water to prevent the adverse consequences of the temperature difference. In addition, naked tanks are suitable for urban environments with small living areas. Naked tanks are often placed indoors, where there is good heat preservation and little air circulation, which is more favorable to the stabilization of water temperature. In conclusion, the premise of bare tank keeping is to avoid big temperature difference; players must place the bare tank indoors and increase the water body as much as possible. Of course, if you use a heating rod, it is a different story. (The use of heating rods must also be indoors, and the point here is that you don’t have to think about increasing the water volume too much if you use heating rods).

water quality

In fact, the real bare tank is actually kept without filtration equipment, in order to ensure stable water quality and ornamental, regular water changes for the turtle tank is a must. The cycle of water change depends on the size of the turtle, feeding density, feeding frequency and feeding amount, if the feeding density is high and the feeding frequency is high, especially in summer, then the frequency of water change is naturally high. Let me give you a personal example: I have a 40cm*30cm bare tank with 3 small yellow-throated turtles with 5cm dorsal armor, the water level is around 7cm, and the water change is done every 5 days (in summer, it is every 3 days). Before changing the water, let the tap water dry under the sun for 1-2 days, and change one half or one third of the water each time, remember to pump out the dirty water at the bottom of the tank, and pay special attention to the turtle’s feces and food residue that sinks at the bottom of the tank, and make sure to suck it clean.

What turtles are suitable for bare tanks?

Because bare tank turtles do not need filtration equipment, so the water quality requirements are relatively high or weak turtles, are not recommended to bare tank breeding, once you one day suffer from lazy cancer, the future of the turtle is uncertain. In addition, some bare tanks don’t even need heating equipment, so tropical turtles can’t be kept in unheated bare tanks, such as: round Australian turtles and West African turtles. There is also a large group of side-necked turtles and egg turtles (such as red-faced egg turtles and Mexican egg turtles), because the native environment of these turtles are in the tropics, so none of them can be considered to be kept in unheated bare tanks. Still, it’s a different story if it’s a bare tank with a heating rod. As for turtles like grass turtles, stone turtles, snapping turtles, Brazilian turtles, razorback turtles, musk turtles and other such turtles, they originally live in areas with relatively cold winters and can naturally go into hibernation in winter, so these turtles are suitable for bare tank keeping.

In short, each player has their own way of raising turtles, bare tank feeding is not synonymous with novice turtles, many turtles big brother in the turtle circle crawling around for many years, around and around a big circle, give up the bottom of the sand and aquascape, and finally found that the bare tank feeding is the most comfortable, as the saying goes, “back to the basics, no trick is better than a trick,” that is, this is the truth. The reasoning is this.