As a child I have always wanted one of them tiny turtles as pets, lately I have seen them in night markets being used in a game or some sorts. Can I buy these anywhere? Does anyone have them? Are they hard to take care of? I remember my mom always telling me I couldn’t have em cuz she said they carried some disease or something…true?
Well i’m a big boy now and I want em…4 of them exactly, $10NT to the first person who can correctly guess what their names will be!
man, you’re gonna have to do better than that to challenge us…but I’ll take the $10NT.
Donnatello
Leonardo
Michaelangelo
Raphael
Good job…stalker! So can I get em or you don’t no nothing but stalking?! :raspberry:
You can get those little guys in any petstore, and they’re fairly easy to take care of. There are several different “kinds” species? that size and they range in price from cheap to cheaper. Like around 100nt. You’ll also need a turtle tank, rocks, and a few inches of water. Oh and turtle food, but if they’re gonna be ninjas, they’ll like pizza.
I think that if you catch them in the game, you get to keep them (if you want them). That’s how it works with the fishies, anyway! Ask the guy at the nightmarket where you have seen them. BTW, I’ve seen turtle food at 199 and in the pet shops, but it’s my understanding that they don’t usually have particularly long life spans. Could be wrong though. Get them a good sized terrarium, some nice rocks and try it out!
Wasn’t there someone here on forumosa who had turtles and took them back to his home country a while back? Can’t remember who it was…
They aren’t all that easy to take care of when they are small…In fact a large percentage of them refuse to eat and die within the first couple of months. Having said that, after a certain age, they are almost impossible to kill.
I have 3 of them…2 are your garden variety turtles you see everywhere. The other is a local breed and quite large, maybe 10 inches long at the shell. I keep them outdoors in a large kiddie pool.
Main thing to watch out for is shell rot. Make sure they have a place to dry themselves in the sun. Also, clean their water regularly, and make sure their inclosure is adequate for their size. My kiddie pool is 170cm by 170cm and has about 4 inches of water. There are also 6 places for them to sun themselves.
My daughter insisted, but unless you are into turtles, they are about the most useless pet around.
We have one and he/she/it does nothing much (inherited from a family returning to the UK and no one else wanted it). I end up doing the cleaning, feeding etc. while the kids ignore it. I’m seriously thinking about letting the poor bugger go in one of the big ponds in NTU…I wouldn’t want to live in a glass box! I must say they are very easy to care for- clean the tank and feed!
That shouldn’t be too hard.
Maybe you should go take a look first at the different kinds, and the size you want. They don’t stay that small and cute forever. A “friend” of mine also bought 4 because they were “so cute”. Now the buggers are big, and living in the bathtub of all things. The water is permanently brown, and smells rotten. They just sit their all day and wait for food to get tossed at them. Every time I go there I want to put them out of their misery, because that kind of limited existence must be worse than death. Hopefully.
Think and read and look before you take the plunge (as with any pet).
[quote=“twonavels”]Maybe you should go take a look first at the different kinds, and the size you want. They don’t stay that small and cute forever. A “friend” of mine also bought 4 because they were “so cute”. Now the buggers are big, and living in the bathtub of all things. The water is permanently brown, and smells rotten. They just sit their all day and wait for food to get tossed at them. Every time I go there I want to put them out of their misery, because that kind of limited existence must be worse than death. Hopefully.
Think and read and look before you take the plunge (as with any pet).[/quote]
I spent over an hour today cleaning the kiddie pool I keep mine in…Yep, they are disgusting, and can foul up 50 gallons of water in two or three days. I also have to take out all of their rocks, ramps and scrub them with a scouring pad. Then the floor of the pool needs to be scrubbed/rinsed out, completed with a gentle rinse of the turtles shells.
Lot of work for very limited return. If they weren’t kiddie pets, they’d have been gone a long time ago. And I would never keep them indoors. I’m in the process of introducing them to wild food, ie whatever flies in the pool. That way, I won’t feel as guilty when they are “returned to the wild” (the neighborhood pond).
Lastly, the big ones bite… :s
i have one, one of the common red-eared sliders you see around the pet shops and ponds–introduced there by pet owners not willing to go the whole nine yards, as they are not native to taiwan. got it as a little tyke and have seen it grow to adulthood. you have to spend a fair amount of time cleaning the enclosure each week, say 20 minutes for my single specimen. personally i find it quite interesting and it seems happy enough to me, it’s always moving around and enjoys its veggies, fish, or whatever food you give it. it starting attacking companions we introduced later so i guess it doesn’t mind the solitary life 
it really doesn’t require much care beyond the cleaning, a rock to bask on and a lamp for that purpose. you’ll def. need a kiddie pool size enclosure for 4 once they get big, think it over. anyway i find the various behaviors of mine interesting. selecting a small one look for an alert one, with no swelling of the eyes or head. press lightly on the back of the shell, if it is very soft to the touch look for another one. by the way page one has a book for just about any pet you could imagine.
Isn’t there one that stays really really tiny all their lifes? I don’t want big ones, but some small ones that I can pour toxic ooze on them and later train them to use swords and stuff.
Seriously just small ones.
RES (red ears sliders) or most turtles do grow with the tank, the bigger tank you get, they grow faster. I have 7 turtles right now in my house, well 4 is mine and i am babysitting the other 3.
here is a website that you might find useful
good luck w/ them. They are so cute and adorable!!
Dofu doesn’t like turtles. They don’t run so they cannot be chased.
[quote=“Frost”]Isn’t there one that stays really really tiny all their lifes? I don’t want big ones, but some small ones that I can pour toxic ooze on them and later train them to use swords and stuff.
Seriously just small ones.[/quote]
a mini-turtle? don’t think so.
I have three… one of them is male (the smallest)… the other is female(the biggest)… and the other is undefined… they range in size from having a shell diameter of say 4 inches to 6 inches ( their shells are eliptical not circular)
the small one is always trying to hump the big one at feeding time
I usually let them out of the water as I had them in a little fish tank before they got really big, but I put a bowl of water than I change every day out the back so they can splash around…
Apart from that they are low maintainance.
We left them in a big basin of water one time for a week… but then their “skin” starting going white. Another time their shells starting peeling… lack of sunlight we worked out…
We moved some stuff around in the back so they could grab some sunlight
Every so often we will put them in a basin to swim.
In the winter they sleep and I feed them only once a week
In the summer they are always hungry and running around the place, so they have to be fed every two days
I wanted to liberate them from captivity one time… but my wife was worried they would not make it on their own. 
They are not the most interesting animals… except for when you dump a half dead coachroach in between them. Then they fight over it
Does anyone in taiwan differentiate between tortoises and turtles and terrapins?
These are terrapins:
Do you pet owners know what species you have? If you get bored with your critters, do not release them into the wild unless you know they are a local species.
Leonardo, Donatello, Michelangelo, and Raphael. And Splinter is a rat.