greentrees
Ack! I never said they don’t make great pets! I think that they can make terrific pets! I just think that we have lots of things to figure out with them. Most of my dbt’s never have gotten fungus and only one has ever gotten shell rot. I have had babies get fungus during shipping when I’ve first gotten them in, but I use a fish fungicide and it knocks it right out. My experience with dbts, so far, is that most of them, if you start with babies, do very well. And if constant saltwater is unneccessary, why use it? The question is, do they need it? In varying proportions at different times? I had similar discussions about 20 years ago when I first started setting up map turtles (Graptemys). Most of them are river turtles, not pond turtles. People (“experts”) said that they were too difficult to keep alive (read the old books), that they developed shell rot easily unless you could keep the water crystal clear. People speculated that you would need a “riverine” setup up with a strong flow of water (indoors in aquariums or outdoors in ponds) to recreate the stream habitat, otherwise they would not survive and certainly would not reproduce. Surprise! They (especially starting from young animals) adapt very well to aquariums and to outdoor (nonriverine) ponds and reproduce like crazy! Granted, the salt factor was not in the debate. -Rick In a message dated 12/9/00 12:45:10 AM SA Eastern Standard Time, greentrees@… writes: they situation? them