How To Remove Turtles From A Pond

This swimming was once a very pretty h2o garden. At present it is habitation to Cindy's new hobby red-eared slider turtles. Water lilies and turtles do not mix well, but she only loves the turtles. So, she has several tub gardens for her water lilies. Photo by Cindy Graham, Editor, POND Trade Magazine.

Having cared for numerous ponds in San Diego County over the by 31 years, I accept come to have an stance most many things related to swimming set-up and maintenance. One of those concerns involves which animals and plants we should try to keep in our ponds. I even wrote an commodity almost information technology in these pages several months ago. Obviously, Manatees and Anacondas are out, as are some smaller creatures, such as children or cats, but one sort of brute ever comes to mind when I am asked about what not to include in a water garden. It is the turtle. Specifically, in my experience, the Red-eared Slider (*Trachemys scripta elegans*). Crayfish run a close 2nd, but turtles are the bane of water gardeners everywhere.

The reason for the disdain with which I regard these creatures is simple. Information technology is their predilection for sampling aquatic plants as food. I know that they are simply grazing, as they are supposed to do, just sometimes it seems equally if there might even be a little bit of sport in it, too. The impairment that can be wrought by i or two turtles in a swimming total of h2o lilies, *Nymphaeas*, is amazing. The evidence is patently to see every bit you arroyo the pond, with detached Nymphaea leaves, or small fragments of oxygenators floating around, or clogging the skimmer, or plants upturned, dug into, and otherwise molested.

It is so bad that in some cases I have refused to work on lucrative ponds because the owner insisted on keeping turtles in the swimming. One fellow wanted me to bring a new prepare of lilies to his pond each calendar week to supervene upon the ones that his turtles had eaten over the course of the preceding calendar week. I told him that that would be far too depressing to deal with, and I quit. His swimming was ugly and dangerous anyway.

In that location are other species of turtles that people in other parts of the country have to deal with, with varying degrees of frustration. I am certain that their complaints will exist the same, and will include other horrors associated with having them in their ponds that will make my complaints seem piffling, but when your livelihood depends upon how overnice the pond looks, it is nice to not have something violent your plants apart in your absence. In areas wherein those other species of turtles are endemic, I say more power to the turtle. The sacrifice of a few fish or plants from time to time to support a native species is a good trade-off in many instances.

Each pond owner must make that decision for himself. Simply, the Red-eared Slider is an introduced species here in San Diego, and so should not be encouraged, in my opinion. Information technology is from the American southward, and has been introduced successfully into many areas through the pet merchandise. They are beautiful and are very easy to intendance for in a sufficiently big aquarium. Eventually, though, they outgrow these showtime containers and are either dumped outside or put into a backyard pond, from which they easily escape to bring together the already burgeoning population of feral, and now native born, turtles in our area.

I have seen the odd Soft-shell turtle in ponds, and once I found a snapping turtle in a swimming whose brand new, and startled, owner was just equally glad that I had institute it, and not her. The previous owner of the house had failed to mention the nearly 10˝ bore snapping turtle in that pond out dorsum. But, even and so, these are very rare events here in San Diego.

The predominant species in the pet merchandise is *Trachemys (slider family*), and considering it is hardy and tough, it has done very well hither. They tin be found wandering all over neighborhoods, and might suddenly appear in a pond in which they had never been. Of course, they might only as suddenly go abroad, simply rarely practice. While they are in the pond, they bite through every found stalk that they see, particularly *Nymphaea* and *Aponogeton* petioles. And the irritating office is that they don't even eat the leaf that they take just severed. I think that they just eat the piece that fit in their mouths when they bite, so the entire leaf or bloom is bitten off so that the turtle could swallow an inch or so of stem tissue.

It is non that I dislike turtles. I just don't want them in my ponds. If they are in the pond of a competitor of mine, that is fine, as long every bit information technology is far enough away from my ponds that no harm tin can come to me because, over again, I don't want them in my ponds.

It is piece of cake enough to set up an area that is designated for turtles, and I have offered this proposition to more than a few people who had information technology in their minds that they were going to have turtles. The intelligent ones have me up on the suggestion, and can then have both a lovely h2o garden and a lively turtle collection, merely not in the same place.

How To Remove Turtles From A Pond,

Source: https://www.pondtrademag.com/why-i-dont-like-turtles-in-my-ponds/

Posted by: bockbutragreake.blogspot.com

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