Turtle + Fish

[agusf]

Hello all

A week or so I got two baby turtles as a gift and Im keeping them well fed in a plastic tank with heating, lighting and good water.
I have a 150 liter aquarium, and whilst buying food for them yesterday the pet store owner told me I could put the turtles in the
aquarium as long as they are with peaceful community fish larger than the turtles mouthes. so the Idea slipped into my mind, would
this be safe? Ive been considering returning some fish to the store to make space for the turtles.

 

[BigC]

Fish and Turtle do not mix,
The turtles will dive for fish after dark when the fish are resting.
Speaking from experience...from many moons ago.
atb
BigC

 

[Rogue4Fish]

turtles produce an massive amount of waste as well...and you've got 2.

I hope you've got some good filtration!

 

[yhaneef]

I had two musk turtle for just under 2 years in my 120L tank. And we had little to no problems from them. The issue came is when I introduced new fish. They used to always go for them and many of them were eaten. However the fish that they grew up with were always left alone.

From my experience, I didn't notice any more waste than with just the fish. However they did have a habit of uprooting my plants.

 

[Randomitity]

I have always lived by the rule not to mix fish and turtles even when I had babies with fish the slower fish ended up getting eaten first and turtles tend to eat fish in the wild

 

[eaglesaquarium]

A friend of mine had a large tank - 125 gallons or so, with some really nice wild caught native fish. We also had two small red-eared sliders donated to him. They all got along well. A student of my friends didn't want their turtle any more, and my friend put it into the tank with the others on Friday. He was planning on getting a bigger tank for this turtle over the weekend, but didn't have one handy. He was hoping that things would be ok for a couple of days. It was significantly bigger than the other turtles, but everything looked fine when he was first introduced.


When we came back on Monday, the tank was filthy, and we couldn't see much inside. We figured out that the filter had gotten blocked, and when we went to clear we noticed what had blocked it - fish remains. Once we got taken care of, we saw the rest of the carnage. Fish bits were EVERYWHERE. He had killed (not eaten, but murdered) almost every fish in the tank. The other turtles were found scavenging on some of the remains.


Needless to say, a mixture of turtles and fish can end in disaster. It was not a pretty sight, and my friend decided that he couldn't keep that turtle any longer. He couldn't even look at it. He had worked very hard to find a nice school of minnow-type fish, as well as a few larger specimens from the local creeks. He was trying to use them to show his students about the local fish-life in the waters around the school. Well, the turtle ruined all that hard work, and he never has recreated his previous tank. That was about 5 years ago.