# Oscar with turtle(s)?



## smellsfishy1 (May 29, 2008)

I'm setting up a 75 gallon tank and it will house a full grown Oscar.
However, I want to get a few turtles out of someone's 10 gallon and into a better home.
The O is about 9 inches and the turtles are smaller, about 6.
Will this work in terms of coexisting, food/water requirements and so on...


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## LSBoost (Jan 21, 2010)

I saw people keeping oscar with turtle with success. You will need a dock, keep the water level a little lower, and have a lamp for the turtle above the dock. I'm not sure with stocking level for two turtle because I've never kept turtle even though I was about to keep some with my oscar.


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## adam79 (Jun 27, 2007)

I keep a turtle with mine. Works just fine. Depends on the species ofcoarse.


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## moto_master (Jun 23, 2006)

I saw a thread on here once where a guy had a small pond in his house that he kept two Oscars with turtals and toads in.

http://www.cichlid-forum.com/phpBB/viewtopic.php?t=205790&start=0


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## Dj823cichild (Mar 30, 2009)

^ That just sounds Awesome!


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## RR38 (Jan 20, 2010)

I have several turtles myself. I have 4 red eared sliders, a southern painted turtle and a eastern box turtle. I see several problems with what you want to do. If the turtles are red eared sliders, they will get bigger than 6", they can get much bigger than 6". My biggest turtle, which is a female red eared slider is pushing 12" and isint done growing yet. Also anything you put in with a turtle will get beat up pretty bad,if not killed and eaten. The oscar will have his fins nipped in a 75, the tank isint even really big enough for two full grown red eared sliders, much less another 11 or 12 inch oscar when it grows up as well. Not to mention you will have to lower the water level to put in a dock, unless you made a above tank basking area above the tank for the turtles to bask in. There are alot of other smaller issues as well, you have to clean a turtle tank every week, and I mean at least an 80% if not a 100% tank change. That will be alot of stress on the O. Now, most of the things I mentioned are based on the turtles being sliders or even painted turtles. If they are smaller turtles, like say a musk or mud or map turtle, than the turtle is grown to its adult size and the tank would indeed be big enough, but you will still run into some of the same issues with the basking platform and the O being stressed all the time.


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## Pali (Dec 22, 2009)

Tanks and turtles must match as RR38 mentions, a 75g tank will fit small turtles and be a good temp home for sliders. You would need a bigger tank later down the road, I would aim for something like 125 - 150 gal. But it will take time, I got both my O's and both turtles as they outgrew the tanks the previous owners kept em in.

I have keept my O's with turtles and toads more then a year now with no problem, the pond in my South american cage is 150 gal. with a big surface.

My turtles are Yellow bellied sliders and they leave the O's alone, I have not seen any signs of agression between turtles and O's. They eat the same and race to get to what ever falls in the water first, but theres been no attempts in eating the O's.

Weekly water changes, maybe twice a week and heavy filtration is needed, both O's and turtles are messy fellas!

My O's don't seem stressed at all, they don't mind the turtles much anymore and sometimes "jump" up onto the cork "stealing" the turtle pellets when they can get to them. Then flopping around back into the water. It looks pretty wild, personaly I was like "WTF" first time I saw it.

@moto_master hehehe it's in my rental apartment hallway - it's more or less permanent build into the place. It will take a air hammer or something to remove the concreat, not an easy task to do. :lol: 
The owner of the building is cool with it

@Dj823cichild thanx - it looks awsome too, I got a banana plants and wierd stuff in there. The pictures in my thread don't really do it justice, but I can't get far enough away from the cage to get good picturtes.


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