Do turtles need air pumps? Do they really need more oxygen in the water? Let’s find out.
You don’t need an air pump for a turtle tank. Turtles don’t need more oxygen in their water as that’s not their primary source of air, turtles go to the surface of the water to get the air that they need.
The main purpose of an air pump is to add more oxygen to the water, and turtles don’t really need that oxygen since they get out of the water when they need to breathe. But this doesn’t mean that you can’t add an air pump to the tank if you want to.
Why You Might Want an Air Pump in a Turtle Tank
While air pumps don’t help turtles breathe better underwater, they can still do a few helpful things, here are some of them:
- Help keep the tank clean for longer
- Make the tank a more pleasant environment
- Are a must-have if you also have fish in the tank
Air Pumps Help Keep the Tank Clean for Longer
Turtles are perhaps the messiest pets in the world, and in order to keep up with them, you will need a really good water filter. And even then there is so much that a water filter can do. This is where air pumps come in.
While water pumps don’t necessarily clean the water, they add more oxygen to it, which will help get rid of the slime and muck by creating surface tension.
The way this works is simple, slime tends to form in still water. And even if your turtle swims in the tank all day, it won’t always create enough movement to stop the formation of slime at the top.
But the air bubbles created by the air pumps will travel from the bottom to the top and will agitate the water at the top and stop the slime from forming.
Air Pumps Make the Tank a More Pleasant Environment
The next thing tath pumps do is that they make the tank a lot more pleasant to look at.
Most tank accessories break very easily or are too small for a turtle, and this comes with a lot of risks. So turtle tanks tend to look too simple.
But this can be easily improved by adding an air pump which will make the whole tank more dynamic and pleasant to look at.
Air Pumps Are a Must-Have if You Also Have Fish in the Tank
Fish and turtles have very different needs, but under certain circumstances, they can both share a tank.
But in order for this to happen, you will need to add an air pump to the tank. While turtles don’t rely on the oxygen in the water, fish do, as they can’t get out of the water to breathe as turtles do.
But this is not the only way turtles breathe, in fact, turtles can breathe in two different ways. One is the normal way of breathing, getting out of the water and inhaling oxygen, and the second one takes place underwater and is similar to the way fish breathe.
How Turtles Breath Underwater
Fish use gills to breathe underwater, while turtles use their cloaca.
A cloaca is a small orifice that can be found at the back end of an animal, and it has many different roles depending on the species of the animal.
You might have heard at some point something like: turtles are able to breathe through their butts. And as weird as it sounds that is kind of true, the cloaca is positioned near the turtle tail and it can be considered the butt of the turtle. But the cloaca acts differently than how you would normally expect a “back end” to work, let’s take for example another animal that we all know, the dog.
The purpose of a dog’s anus is to execrate, and that is it, it’s not involved in any other biological processes. But the cloaca is used for more than that.
The cloaca has 4 important roles: execration, urination, reproduction, and breathing. Turtles use only one orifice for those things and that is the cloaca.
The cloaca can be found in other animals as well, they are not exclusive to turtles. Most birds have a cloaca, some fishes, and a few mammals. The cloaca can be a little different for other animals, but those that have it will generally use it for the same purpose, with the exception of breathing, not too many animals that have a cloaca use it for breathing, mainly because they don’t have any reason to do it.
For turtles, the cloaca consists of the Urodeum, the central part of the cloaca that receives urine from the ureter, the Proctodeum, the back ectodermal part of an alimentary canal, and the Coprodeum.
Cloacas are also used to lay eggs, when turtles lay their eggs, they expel them through the cloaca.
If you own an aquatic turtle and you want to see your turtle using its cloaca to breathe, you can easily do so. Just look at the back end of the turtle when it’s swimming around, if you spend 15 minutes looking you have a pretty big chance of seeing it in action.
Now let’s take a closer look at how turtles usually breathe and how and why they breathe through the cloaca.
If you’d like to know more about how turtles breathe underwater you can check out this article where we take a deep dive into the subject: Do Turtles Have Gills? (How Turtles Breathe Underwater).
Final Thoughts
So, turtles don’t need air pumps, but having them won’t hurt either.
The main purpose of an air pump is to add more oxygen to the water so that underwater breathing animals can breathe easier. But turtles don’t rely on their ability to breathe underwater in order to live in a tank so the air pump loses its main functionality.
But if you want to make your tank look nicer, or if you are having problems with slime, you can get one, as it will help you out greatly.
Related questions
How long can a turtle stay underwater? It depends on the turtle, most sea turtles will be able to go for at least 5 hours without breathing, and most aquatic turtles should be able to stay underwater for at least 20-30 minutes, land turtles on the other hand are not very good at staying underwater so 1 minute is the average you can expect them to be able to stay underwater. Here is a list of average times a turtle can spend underwater:
- Box turtle – 1 – 2 minutes
- Desert tortoise – 1 – 2 minutes
- Snapping turtle – 20 – 30 minutes
- Red-eared slider – 20 – 30 minutes
- Map turtle – 20 – 30 minutes
- Green sea turtle – 7 – 10 hours
- Leatherback sea turtle – 7 – 10 hours
- Kemp’s ridley – 7 – 10 hours
- Olive ridley – 7 – 10 hours
How long do turtles hibernate? Turtles don’t have a set amount of time that they plan to hibernate, instead, they go to hibernate when the weather gets too cold for them, and they get out of hibernation when the weather gets warmer.
Do turtles breathe when they hibernate? Yes, they do. But not through their noses like they normally do, instead they use the cloaca which is a gill-like structure that allows them to gather small quantities of oxygen when they are underwater.
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Thanks u a lot, very intelligent news and advices.