Photographed by an observer on iNaturalist and published under a Creative Commons licence; the photographer and the licence are named under the image. It is not an animal of ours, and no animal was handled by us to produce it.
The numbers
Temperature
The cool side, 25–27°C. This sheet states the cool side only. It gives no warm side or basking figure, so the hot end is not in our data. Same scale on every sheet here, so two species compare by eye.
The sheet statescool 25-27 °C
UVB
The sheet statesone 34" Arcadia T5 HO 6% or Zoo Med T5 HO ReptiSun 5.0 in a reflective T5 HO fixture; The lamp should be hung from the ceiling to be 13-14" above the basking spot; UVI of 3.0 – 4.0 in the basking area
Identity
Enclosure and conditions
What your climate adds
This sheet states a range to hold. Your local climate decides how much work holding it is. Pick the nearest city: nothing is sent anywhere, the choice stays in this browser.
Diet
Feeding rhythm
Twenty-eight days, one row. Each band is a meal window.
Why
The windows widen as they go because the interval is a range: four meals after a 10–14 day cycle land anywhere between day 40 and day 56.
The sheet statesPainted turtles <6 months: 50% protein / 50% vegetables — protein food or pellets daily — vegetable food daily; Painted turtles between 6-12 months: 50% protein / 50% vegetables — protein food or pellets every other day — vegetable food daily; Painted turtles >1 year: 25% protein / 75% vegetables — protein food or pellets 2-3x/week — vegetable food daily
Common questions
Does it need a water heater?
Not in our climate. What matters more is clean water, a dry basking platform and UV light.
How big does it get?
About 12 to 20 cm, so it stays smaller than a slider.
What does it eat?
Pellets as the base, plus insects, fish and greens. Adults eat more plant matter than youngsters.
Does the water smell?
Only if the filter is undersized or you overfeed. With strong filtration and weekly water changes there is no smell.
What it needs
Every line above is deduced from a value this sheet states, and names which one. Nothing here is a general recommendation. What the sheet does not state is listed too, rather than left out: a kit that looks complete is worse than one that names its gap.
Sources
Others in this group
What this sheet states
This sheet states 3 of 7 of the fields this product runs on. What is missing turns something off: humidity instrument and audit, enclosure size audit, day/night engine and awake count on the globe, the diet section. We show the gap rather than fill it with a plausible number.
UVB is measured but does not count: it is absent from 421 of 678 sheets, and on most of them that is not a gap, since a nocturnal snake's sheet has no reason to state a UV index. Counting it would call the library incomplete without cause.