Turtle In A 75 Gallon

Can I keep a single Red Eared Slider Turtle In a 75 Gallon Tank I am still learning about them and was just wondering, any info on them would be nice too. I still have not decided what I want in my new 75-gallon tank whether it is fish or turtles or maybe something else. The turtles at petco are usually about 4-4.5 inches in length. My tank is (L 48in by W 18in by H 21in).

 

You can for a while. It will eventually outgrow the tank tho, they do better in ponds or 200+ gallon tanks since they are only semI aquatic. And have a very large bioload

 

Thank you, I would assume they are a lot of maintenance then?

 

Well, they can tolerate very poor water quality, but if you don't stay on top of the maintenance they smell terrible. Map turtles are a smaller species that you might be interested in. The males full grown are only around 4-5" across.

 

I agree you could start with the 75 gallon then upgrade. I’ve got a painted turtle hatchling in a 20 gallon right now but I know by next year I’ll probably need to upgrade. Growth seems faster then I expected bu I think it slows as they get older.

 

Would it be ok to keep two in there? I understand that that would be maxed out then I will probably just keep one though. I am going to have the water 12-16 inches high.

 

I would only keep one. You’re going to be astounded at how much a single turtle fouls up your entire tank because they poop a lot. And then they swim through their poop and it turns into turd dust I thankfully am able to have my turtles outdoors during the summer but whenever I had them indoors I would have to change their water twice a day. And though they can tolerate dirty water, I wouldn’t let them. Bad water can quickly cause shell rot and that’s a pain in the rear to deal with.

 

2 Male map turtles you could do with heavy filtration and plants. Instead of lowering your water level that much you could get a turtle log and just lower it enough they can't crawl out. More water volume equals less maintenance.