Do Turtles Drink Water? (What You Need to Know

Turtles can be very mysterious creatures, so mysterious that even now we don’t know that much about their behavior. So asking yourself if they drink water is quite understandable. Even if I own a few turtles I had to do some research before writing this article just to make sure that I gave the right answer.

Turtles need to drink water in order to survive, if they don’t drink enough water they are at risk of dehydration. Clean drinking water is essential for the good health of a turtle.

Turtles drink from the water in which they live, so it can be quite hard to tell whether they are drinking it or simply opening their mouth.

The fact that turtles drink the water they live in is both a good thing and a bad thing. Here is why.

Turtles Drink the Water in Which They Live

The Bad Part

As you can imagine, the fact that turtles drink the same water in which they live isn’t that healthy since this water contains excrements and old food particles. But this is not as bad as it might seem. If a human were to drink this water it will inevitably get sick at some point. But turtles are a lot more resistant to the bacteria in this water.

In the wild nobody changes the water in the lake or pond, so turtles have adapted, and become somewhat resistant to this type of water.

But there is a limit to their natural resistance, so you still have to change their water from time to time.

In the wild, turtles drink water from the lake or pond in which they live. The water there has a lot of good bacteria that remove the excrements and the harmful bacteria from the water, and the water volume is also a lot greater, so even if there were no good bacterias, the impact would have been less significant.

Now that we talked about the bad thing, let’s take a look at the positive side of things.

The Good Part

The good thing about this is that you don’t have to worry about having a separate container where to put clean water for them to drink. This might not seem like such a good thing, but imagine having to add a bowl with water to a tank full of water, and to make sure that your turtle has easy access to it, that’s not too easy.

So overall the fact that turtles drink the same water in which they live is not that great. But there are a few things that you can do to make your life as a turtle owner easier.

How to Keep the Water Clean for Longer

There are 3 main things that you can do in order to keep the water cleaner for longer, and those are:

A bigger water tank
A better filter
Change how you feed your turtle

A Bigger Tank

As turtles grow they will start to produce more and more mess. So to reduce the impact of the mess they produce, and to offer them a proper environment, you should get a bigger tank that won’t be affected by the mess too fast.

If you got your turtle when it was a juvenile, then it grew a lot in the last months, as most juvenile turtles do. So now the tank that you got for your turtle, in the beginning, is probably too small. As a general rule of thumb, there should be 10 gallons of water in the tank for every inch of shell your turtle has. So if your turtle was 4 inches when you got it, then a 40-gallon tank should have been enough. But if your turtle has 6 inches in shell length, that 40-gallon tank is too small. You have to get at least a 60-gallon one.

The 10 gallons per inch of the shell is a rule of thumb, so it’s not exact, but you can’t go wrong with it. If this is your problem I would suggest you get the biggest tank that you can afford, and you can fit in your home. As turtles grow older they will grow at a slower rate, but they will still grow. So instead of changing the tank every 2 or 3 years, it’s cheaper to just buy a big one from the start.

On the Recommended Gear page you can also find my recommendations on the best tanks on the market right now, the recommendations are based on the personal experience of the turtleowner.com team and a lot of research.

But even the biggest tank won’t be able to keep itself clean, this is why you also need a good filter.

A Better Filter

The water filter is one of the most essential things that keep your tank clean. And it’s very easy to choose the wrong one.

When I say the wrong one I don’t mean the wrong producer or the wrong brand. No, I mean the wrong power.

Most water filters are rated for certain water quantities. So it’s common to see a seller saying that this model is for 40 gallons of water, this one is for 60 and this one is for 120. But those water quantities are based on fish tanks, not turtle tanks. Fish will also make the water dirty, but not as much and as fast as turtles.

So 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, it can actually help. 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 in a day or two after you clean the tank.

You can find my recommendations for the best water filters on the Recommended Gear page.

Change How You Feed Your Turtle

There are some things in the water that can make it even dirtier than excrements, and those things are food particles.

Food particles appear in the water when your turtle eats. They are the small fragments that break off the food when your turtle bites them, and they are almost invisible to the naked eye. And the only way to completely remove them is to change the water, there is no way around it, even if the filter will help, it won’t get rid of all of them.

But what you can do instead is to prevent the water particles from getting into the tank from the start. And you can easily do that by feeding your turtle in a different container

You just have to fill a different container with water and then place the turtle inside of it, and place the food there. After the turtle eats you should let it stay there for another 10 minutes, and then place it back in the tank. After that, you can just throw the water from the container away and you are done. It’s that simple.

This method is very simple and 100% effective. Just make sure that you don’t use the container for anything else, like placing food that you want to eat in it. Turtles carry bacterias that can be harmful to us.

You will have to clean the container after you are done, but just putting it in the shower and washing it quickly shouldn’t take more than a minute.

The whole process should only take 5 minutes of your time since you don’t have to supervise your turtle while it’s eating. So you will lose 35 minutes in a week doing this, but you will save several hours since you won’t have to clean the tank as often.

How to Change the Water in the Tank

If you do the things I mentioned above you should be able to keep the water cleaner for a longer time. But there will come a point when you will have to change it, so let me give you a few pointers on how to do that the proper way.

The first thing you should do is take your turtle out of the tank. It can be really annoying and stressful for them to clean the tank when they are inside.

Most tanks have algae on the sides of the tank. A really good way to get rid of it is to use a magnetic sponge. This sponge has a magnet that will connect the outside piece to the inside one and it will make cleaning the tank a lot easier.

Now the next thing you should do is to unplug the filter and the heater. If you don’t unplug the heater there is a good chance that it will explode or get damaged when it gets out of the water.

Now get a bucket and use a siphon to remove about 70% to 75% of the water. While removing the water move the siphon in the tank so that you take out as many algae as you can. After you are done keep the bucket of water near you, don’t throw the water out yet.

Take the sponge out of the water filter and wash it in the bucket with water from the tank. Water filters contain certain bacterias that keep the water clean. If you were to wash the filter in clean water it will remove all the good bacteria.

Now you can fill the tank back up and plug the heater and the filters back.

Turtles are really messy so you should do this about once a week. But it can also depend on the size of the tank. There are certain kits that will tell you when it’s time to change the water, but if your tank smells really bad then that means that you really have to clean it.

Conclusion

So turtles do drink water, unfortunately, they drink the same water in which they defecate. And this means that you have to make sure that you clean the tank, otherwise your turtle might get sick.

But as you’ve seen, there are a lot of ways in which you can make the water remain clean for longer. And turtles are not that sensible either, they have a strong immune system that is accustomed to the harmful bacteria in the water. So if you postpone changing the water for a day or two nothing bad should happen.

I hope this article answers all your questions. But in case you have any left, you should leave them in the comment section and I will do my best to answer them as soon as possible.