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Cleaning the Turtles

October21

I spent an hour of the afternoon cleaning out the turtles tank. This is not an easy task and it time consuming. Lucky I only have to do it once a month. The tank requires to be clean for the health of the turtles, they can get sick if you leave them in dirty water, water full of their rotting food and their faeces. You wouldn’t like to be swimming around in that would you.

First you have to remove the turtles from the tank. I put them in a tub with a little of the water from the tank. I put them in the living room where it is warm so they don’t freeze and get sick. I then slowly remove the water from the tank and put it down the drain. This consists of me holding a tube for ten minutes that sucks out the water from the tank and transfers it to the sink.

After the water is removed, I wipe the tank down with a sponge. I make sure that the glass is nice and clean on the inside so there is no dirt to make the clean water dirty and also make sure the glass is clean on the outside so we can see the turtles swim and play in the water. I also have to clean the dirty from the heater and the filter that is in the turtle tank.

Cleaning the filter is the best part. I generally go outside with the hose and put it on high pressure and blast the filth out of the filter sponges and in the gaps on the filter case. The water sprays back everywhere, including my face and my clothes. I am usually soaked after hosing the filter. Also there is a small river in the backyard because I have used so much water and it can’t find a place to escape.

After the everything is cleaned, it is time to fill the tank with nice, clean warm water. The mixture is 8 parts cold, 2 parts hot. Waiting for the water to boil is the most time consuming part of cleaning the tank. The jug takes about 5 minutes to boil and I need to boil it about 6 times. I do that and fill the tank so far up. There we have it, a nice clean tank.

We generally wait about an hour or two before returning the turtles to their clean home. When that time comes, the tub of water where they are temporarily smells horrible. They have went toilet in there and the water is disgusting. I put the turtles back in the tank slowly so they don’t hurt themselves and then I watch them swim around happily in their nice clean home.

The silly thing is, that as soon as I put them in, thats when the nonsense starts. I think it is an animal law to dirty when you have just been cleaned. One of the first things the turtles do when they return to their tank is go soil it. The water is only clean for half an hour before they dirty it with their faeces. Also the two mischievous turtles like to swim around and move the filter. The filter ends up in the middle of the tank on an angle. We end up sticking our hands in to fix their home.

Well cleaning is one of the disadvantages of having pets. Its a small price to pay for the fun and happiness they give you, even if my ones stay in their tank most of the time. At least they are fun to take pictures of :)

Mischievous Turtles

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posted under Life
3 Comments to

“Cleaning the Turtles”

  1. On October 21st, 2007 at 10:15 pm TheSkorm Says:

    I dunno if I said this or not, but your turtles are hawt.

  2. On October 21st, 2007 at 10:57 pm zzap Says:

    Interesting post. Your turtles are pretty cute. I’d hate having to put my hands in the mucky water from their filth. Yucky.

  3. On October 22nd, 2007 at 8:27 am Peppery Says:

    Nice post. I’m glad my cat takes about 12 hours to start soiling his room again :p

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