So I took my turtle Brooklyn out for a walk on the grass and decided to measure him up.
As I haven't measured him in a while and I have noticed he is definitely slowly out growing his tank. And to my surprise his shell is now over 26cm long!!
Wow he is getting huge!!
Luckily my mate is building a big pond in his back yard and he is keen to have Brooklyn live there. Which will be way better than a big fish tank.
Brooklyn would be about 13 years old now. And these turtles can live up to 50 years old!!
Brooklyn is a Murray River Turtle, and these turtles are found in most East Coast river systems.
Predominantly found in the Murray River region.
Brooklyn is a male turtle and their shell can grow up to 30cm long and weight around 2.2kg. So he is nearly fully grown.
Now here is a strange story for you.
Brooklyn normally eats turtle pellets and ever second week I will get him some feeder fish or yabbies for a treat as Murray River Turtles are omnivores so they love hunting fish as well as eating plants and algae.
I normally get him about 6 feeder fish which are some form old gold fish and they are about 5cm long.
Brooklyn loves this!
And it would take about 5 minutes until he had hunted and devoured them all, and then he would relax on his pontoon with a full belly.
But this one feeding about a year ago now it was a normal feed of 6 feeder fish but this time he left one behind. And it seemed as they had become friends.
Another fortnight passed and I got him another 6 feeder fish and he ate them all and left the same fish alone to live another day.
So they must be friends. Maybe Brooklyn wanted some company in his tank. Or this fish is just to fast and can outsmart Brooklyn. None the less a year on and this fish is getting huge!!
It's nearly the size of Brooklyn.
You can see that Brooklyn has taken a couple of nips at the fishes fins over time. But they are still mates.
Hopefully my mate will take the fish as well. Fingers crossed.