Mating Habits with aquatic turtles

Question
Hi Mark,

I hope that you will be able to assist me since I know that you are a tortoise expert but I read your advice and it appears that you are very knowledgeable so I am hoping that you can assist me with some information for my problem.

As an avid turtle lover I have raised many varieties of turtles, both land and water over the past 40 years.  I took a 15 year break from having any indoor tanks because I was unable to have them in my current living situations.

I recently purchased a home and was once again able to put together a quality aquarium for some turtles.

I rescued a male Eastern Painted turtle that was 4" x 4" this past November.  At the same time I also purchased a female red-eared slider that was around 3.5" by 3.75" from Petco.  She was the nicest in the tank and the only female that did not try to bite me when I picked her up to look at her.  I had a male red-eared Slider that was very aggressive and difficult to place with other turtles last year so I gave him to someone who only wanted one turtle and all is well now.

For the past 8 months these two turtles have been living together very successfully in a 55 gallon tank that is chemically perfect and my husband and I always take great care to keep it very clean and environmentally sound with quality equipment and proper lighting.

In the 40 years that I have had turtles, I have only had one spotted female turtle that layed eggs in the tank.  I have never had any aggressive male turtles hunting for females or look to fertilize eggs and I was shocked when the male Eastern Painted started to flail his front claws and touch the female sliders face carefully and then try to get on top of her to fertilize her.  He has been repeating this behavior for the past week and a half and today after cleaning the tank, when we put him back in he went after the female attacked her biting her neck and he would not let go. I had to separate them as she swam away and tried to hide in the corner probably pretty shocked and scared at his behavior because he is the shy one who is usually docile.

I did see him approach her with his mouth opened during last week one day and pushed him away but I am not sure what happened after I went to work that day.

In order to thwart this biting behavior my husband cut a small wire square and he wedged it into the tank so that they would each have a half of the tank and that he could not attack her any more.  

I have looked through my many turtle books on diseases,habitat and behaviors and have only found out that this is the mating ritual that turtles do so that the male can fertilize the eggs. There is really very information about how long this behavior lasts.

I have not set up a box for the female to lay the eggs nor have I seen any eggs in the bottom of the tank.

All of the information in the books stops short of saying how long does the female stay in heat?  How did a turtle of an entirely different species know that this female turtle was in heat?  Is she going to lay eggs?  How long does this cycle take and how long does the scent last?  The male must have figured it out somehow so we are wondering if changing all of the water took out most of the scent or is it still there.

Please HELP! My husband and I are beside ourselves trying to figure out what to do.  

The female is now happy being left alone and the male is just trying to get through the wire and I see that he is just unraveled by this piece of screen.  Both of these little guys swim, eat, sleep and bask together.  They are very fond of each other.  Even thought the red-eared slider is a loner, she loves her brother/friend/partner!  She always seeks him out and stays with him.  They are very cute together.  I feel badly because I do not know what to do for the little male who wants his companion.  The last group of turtles I had, did not play well in the sand box. From my many years of raising turtles I know that you have to find ones that work well together and will "play well in the sand box" as they say.  This is why this is strange.  Both of these turtles get along amazingly well even though they are different species.  

Also, the female has now grown over 1.5 inches in 8 mos and the male only around 1/2 inch.  These red eared sliders grow very fast.

I appreciate any help, information or advice that you can offer to my husband and I and I am sure that Hamden-the male Eastern Painted and Ruby-the female Red-Eared Slider will also appreciate this so that they can get back to normal living in their aquarium.

I want to thank you in advance for all of your help and I look forward to hearing from you soon.

Paula

Paula Capaldo

Answer
Thanks for writing.

First, there is no way you are going to get fertile eggs from this- sliders and painteds cannot interbreed successfully- they may look alike but their DNA is very different.

Next, the housing is a bit small. While there are few absolute rules, a good working guideline is to allow 10 gallons of actual water per inch of turtle shell length. You have two turtles that are about the same size at 4.5" long if I understand the description correctly. 9" of turtles would be best kept in 90 gallons of water, or a 120 gallon tank mostly filed.

Besides offering more space and making it easier to keep clean (which sounds backwards, but bigger tanks get soiled more slowly), the space allows turtles their own territories. This is especially important as males hit sexual maturity. Your Painted Turtle is basically a hormone-driven teenager who does not care that the female in the tank is uninterested or the wrong species- she is close enough. He would do the same thing to toy turtle or a male Painted if it let him.

In fact, being a Red-ear Makes it worse- she is not sending him the signals to get away that an uninterested Painted Turtle would.

Female turtles do not go into heat or release a scent, and as she gets larger than him (she will eventually hit 12", he will only do 6-7" depending on subspecies), she will 'excite' him even more since female water turtles are almost always larger than the males.

Now- the biting is an interesting element. With the addition of biting we are no longer sure if this is a teenager interested just in sex, or a teenager interested in territory and domination- aggression displays in turtles are almost the same as mating displays. Usually the difference between the two turtles involved cannot actually mate but this line gets blurry when the turtle acting like a male is a real male (females do the aggression in many cases) and is in its teenager years- which, based on size, it is.

Whether it is bullying or mating, the only two real options are separation (using something they cannot see through, ideally separate tanks) or a bigger habitat. Personally, I'd keep the Painted in the 55 gallon tank and give away the Red-ear or house her in a different tank  of at least 75 gallons to accommodate her future growth.

A good on-line resource to try is http://www.austinsturtlepage.com and their forum http://www.turtleforum.com

You might want to give the forum a try before doing too much to get some second opinions.

Good luck!