Are Turtles Low Maintenance? (I’ve Had Turtles for 10 Years)

Some people say that turtles are some of the lowest maintenance pets out there, while other people say tha they are very demanding, so what’s the truth. I’ve been a turtle owner for more than 10 years, and I want to clear things up.

Turtles are low maintenance pets. The only things that you have to provide for them are a healthy diet, an adequate tank where they can live, and to change their water when it gets dirty.

Turtles have some upfront requirements, but after that, the only thing that you have to do is to give them food regularly and to change their water when it gets dirty. But if you don’t meet these upfront requirements, turtles can become very high maintenance pets. Let me explain why.

Why Turtles Are Low Maintenance

I’ve had my turtles for more than 10 years at this point, and this is what I have to do in order to take care of them:

Give them food once every 3 days
A partial water change once every 2 weeks
Clean the tank completely once a year

And that’s it. Basically, you only have to feed them two times per week and do a partial water change once every two weeks. And if the tank gets really dirty clean it once per year.

And it’s not that I’m doing anything special, or that my turtles are more low maintenance than other turtles. All I’ve done is make sure that they have a proper tank with a good filtration system, and that’s it.

The only reason why you might hear somebody say that taking care of turtles is hard is that they didn’t get a proper tank right from the start, or they got an underpowered water filter, or they don’t know how to properly feed their turtle. If you don’t know how to do those things, then yes it can become quite complicated. But it shouldn’t be.

So let’s take a look at what you need to do in order to ensure that your turtle will not become a high maintenance pet.

What You Need for a Pet Turtle

Choosing the Right Tank

The first thing that you have to do when you get a turtle is to choose a proper tank.

When it comes to turtle tanks the material or brand of the tank doesn’t matter, what’s important is that it is the correct size.

As a general rule, you want your tank to have at least 10 gallons of water for every inch of shell your turtle has.

One very important thing to keep in mind when choosing a tank is that baby turtles can grow really fast. For example, a baby red-eared slider that has only 2 inches, will grow up to 5 in its first year. So when you get a tank you should take into consideration how big your turtle will end up, and get a proper tank right from the start.

While a bigger tank will cost you more right now, you will actually be saving money since you will have to get a bigger one in a year or so. And you won’t have to buy multiple tanks.

The size of the tank will make your turtle be either a low maintenance pet or a high maintenance pet. The reason for this is simple. The more water is in the tank, the longer it will take for it to get dirty, and the less often you will have to change it.

And while changing the water once every two weeks is not that bad, doing it once every three or four days is.

If you are not sure how to choose a tank you should check out our recommended products section and take a look at our picks for the best turtle tanks, from our team’s personal experience with them.

Choosing the Right Filtration System for Your Tank

Having a bigger tank means that there is more water, so it will get dirty slower. But it will still get dirty, and this will happen in a few days. This is why you want to have a water filter, which will keep the water clean for weeks.

But, this will only happen if you get the right water filter, if you choose the wrong one, is almost as not having one.

And surprisingly enough, most people choose to buy the wrong water filter for their tanks. And when I say wrong I don’t mean the wrong model or the wrong brand, no. The problem is that those filters don’t have enough power.

Filters are rated based on how much water they can cycle, so we have 20-gallon water filters and 60-gallon water filters. The problem is that most of those filters are rated for fish tanks, not for turtle tanks. And the amount of mess a fish mess doesn’t even compare to the mess a turtle makes.

For a turtle tank, you should get double the power that the tank needs. So if you have a 40 gallons tank you should get a filter that is rated for 80 gallons, not for 40. If you have a 60 gallons tank then you should get a 120 gallons water pump, not a 60.

You can always go higher, there is no problem. But going lower will usually mean that you will have to clean the tank a lot more often, and the water will start to smell bad really soon.

If you want to know which are the best water filters available on the market you can check out the Recommended Gear page, there you will find my recommendations.

And with this, we’ve covered the cleaning part, which is usually the reason why people believe turtles are high maintenance, but as you can see that’s not the case. Now, et’s talk a little about feeding your turtle, and how to do this correctly.

How to Feed Your Turtle Correctly

If you search online you will find a lot of different ways in which you can feed your turtle, some will say that you have to feed them daily, some of them once every two weeks, and everything in between. And not all of those feeding schedules are correct.

The correct way of feeding an adult turtle is once every three days. Juvenile turtles once every two days (juveniles are turtles older than one year, but which haven’t reached their full size) and baby turtles every day.

As for how much food you should give them, there are again multiple methods, but the simple and healthiest method is called “ The size of the head method”

This method says that you should feed your turtle the same amount of food that it would take to fill its head (without the neck) as if it were hollow.

The simplest way to put this method into practice is to find a small container, like a medicine cup, a shot glass, or a bottle cap. This container has to be approximately the same size as the head of your turtle, without the neck. Then you fill that container to the top, and then you can feed the food inside the container to your turtle.

You don’t always have to use a container, you can always just estimate the food that you would need to fill its head. If you sometimes give your turtle a little too much food, and sometimes you give it a little less, there will be no problem. Your turtle won’t be affected by small differences.

This method works great because it takes into consideration the size of the turtle, and gives you a fixed amount of food that you have to give your turtle. And as the turtle grows the amount of food will grow with it.

This is the method I’ve been using to feed my turtles, and all of them are healthy and in great shape.

Final Thoughts

So, overall I would say that turtles are low maintenance pets, as long as you’ve got a proper setup.

If you have a tank that is too small, an underpowered water filter, and you feed your turtle way too much, then it will turn into a high maintenance pet, but if you do everything right, I can’t think of a pet that is lower maintenance, than a turtle.

But, the things that we covered here are not everything that you need to know about taking care of a turtle, you also need a basking area, and you also need to get the temperature of the water right. While those things don’t need any maintenance, you still need to get them right. So I would recommend you to check out the article Guide for Lighting and Heating a Turtle Tank and Basking Area, where I cover the subject more in-depth.

And if you are interested in certain aspects, like how a healthy diet for your turtle species looks, or if you are looking for an in-depth care guide, you can check out our Care Guides, where you will find hundreds of articles, each covering a wide variety of topics. And if you have a question about something that we didn’t cover you can always leave a comment and we will answer it as soon as possible.