Fly River Turtles: The “Holy Grail” Species

Transcript

Wendy:
[0:22] Hey, everyone. Today we’re talking to Raul Gonzalez about fly river turtles,

Introduction to Fly River Turtles

Wendy:
[0:27] also known as pig-nosed turtles. And you’re going to have to help me with the species because just looking at it, I know I’m going to screw it up.

Raul:
[0:35] I’ve heard it pronounced as Carettochelys insculpta.

Wendy:
[0:40] Okay. Carettochelys. I mean, that’s what it looks like. Yeah.

Raul:
[0:46] Don’t feel bad because I’ll probably botch it. I’m botching it right now. So don’t feel bad.

Wendy:
[0:51] Well, if we’re both screwing it up, then yeah.

Raul:
[0:54] Yeah, we’re good.

Wendy:
[0:56] Thank you so much for joining me today. Can you tell me a little bit how you got started with this species?

Raul:
[1:02] So thank you for having me, first of all, Wendy. I appreciate it. So fly river turtles is that, I guess, to most or all, it’s like a holy grail turtle, right? Holy grail, excuse me. It’s just that the sea turtle that you can legally own, even though it’s not a sea turtle, they have flippers. And as a kid, I used to get on kinksnake.com, which was the classified ads, go to the aquatic turtle section, go to the forums in there. And I used to just Google or Yahoo or AOL search, whatever turtle species I could read about that seemed interesting or that I found on a book. And Fly Rivers was one of those turtles that you read about, but never heard about them being obtainable. If there was any mention of pricing or availability, it was always rare, high dollar demand. It just took getting older and having some monies and being involved more in the reptile community where an animal came available. I purchased it and that was the first animal or the first fly river I kept. And it was just, they’re inspiring in a sense. They’re just so relaxing to watch swim in an aquarium. It’s like a fish. I mean, you just watch them. It’s mesmerizing, I guess is the word.

Wendy:
[2:21] Yeah. So how long ago did you get your first one?

Raul:
[2:24] Probably 2008, 2000. Yeah, I think 2008.

Wendy:
[2:30] So you’ve had them for quite a while.

Raul:
[2:32] Yeah, it’s been a minute. Yeah. Now, the original animal, I don’t have now. Of course, at the time, you know, going through different things, life, relationships, you know, setups and so forth. I sold the original animal. I’ve, you know, throughout time, I acquired more. And then as of recently, now that we have moved to Florida back about eight years ago and got really serious in keeping things outside and really into trying to breed things, I’ve acquired a group over the past five years. And now we’re at 12 animals.

Wendy:
[3:07] Okay. And they’re, they’re all outside, right?

Raul:
[3:11] Yes, I have. So when we bought this house in Florida, the goal, the end goal was no animals in the house, even though we still have animals in the house.

Wendy:
[3:19] It always starts that way, right?

Raul:
[3:21] Yeah, yeah. The goal, no, no reptiles in the house or have a separate building. That’s the end goal is to have a separate building where I can keep hatchlings and keep kind of the projects that can be outdoors. But yeah when we moved here it was to we had some acreage and the end goal was to have animals outdoors all year as much as we can and basically make it easier somewhat on us to keep them right because having a 20 30 light bulbs on during you know the day out in the house light bill goes up like crazy buying light bulbs all the time to replace them it’s it’s you know why do all that when we have the sun outside, it gets pretty freaking hot.

Wendy:
[4:05] Yeah. And in the summer, you know, when I have juveniles inside, I’ve got, you know, eight heat lights running and it’s 80 degrees in the house. It’s like as cool as you can get it.

Raul:
[4:19] Exactly. Exactly. So, so the end goal was to keep everybody outdoors and do it like most of these turtle breeders do it out here is, you know, almost everything’s outside.

Natural History of the Species

Wendy:
[4:31] Yeah. Well, let’s take a quick look at their natural history. They’re just such a unique species. They’re almost completely aquatic, right? They’re not on land much.

Raul:
[4:43] Only animals I’ve seen, well, the only animal I could think would come out of land is female to lay eggs or maybe a male that’s getting beat up. Yep. Or a male that’s getting beat up by a bunch of other animals and he needs to get away and find another body of water to get into, right? But they don’t bask out of the water. They don’t crawl out to explore. None of that. They stay in the water 99% of the time.

Wendy:
[5:09] Okay. And they’re native to Northern Australia and Southern New Guinea, living in freshwater streams and rivers. They’re omnivorous. And I don’t know if you’ve experienced this, but I was reading that they mostly kind of eat fruit and plants with a small amount of insects and crustrations?

Raul:
[5:29] Maybe the juveniles do that, but the adults, they eat everything. They’re going to take…

Wendy:
[5:34] Okay, so they’re not picky.

Raul:
[5:36] Yeah, fruits. These turtles, of course, fruits is their favorite. Bananas, apples, pears, melons, watermelon, mango. I mean, the whole smorgasbord there are fruits. They’ll go for it. They like squash, sweet potato, butt, shrimp, fish, beef heart, chicken gizzards. I mean, you can’t go wrong. If they’re not eating for you, maybe there’s an issue.

Wendy:
[5:58] Something’s wrong.

Raul:
[5:59] Maybe, yeah, maybe it’s an acclimation issue. Maybe it’s a temperature issue, but they are not picky. Pelleted foods, all day. Tortoise food, Missouri tortoise chow, crock chow, catfish, pond pellets, water hyacinth, whatever you got, they take it.

Conservation and Legal Status

Wendy:
[6:15] So it sounds like the wild populations are declining rapidly and there was quite a bit of poaching going on. I know that they’re farmed in Indonesia. Is that where most of like the, you know, five to six inch ones that we get in the U.S. are from?

Raul:
[6:35] I would like to believe, and I’m sure they are from Indonesia, from a farm or captive farmed. And from my understanding, and of course, this is, it’s been a while, but I want to see the last legal imports. And I’m not sure if they were from New Guinea of Fly Rivers, where I think in the early 2000s, late 90s.

Wendy:
[6:56] Okay, so it’s been a while.

Raul:
[6:59] And then the recent animals that are coming in are being cleared, but I think they’re coming from Indonesia. And they’re being imported legally. There’s no illegal fugazi or skewed paperwork. They’ve been cleared in the past three years or four years that they’ve been coming in. They’ve been cleared by U.S. Fish and Wildlife.

Wendy:
[7:17] Because they have to come in with CITES paperwork, right?

Raul:
[7:22] I think they’re CITES 1, if I recall. And yeah, I think they’re farm-raised. So the rumor years ago when all these animals would be smuggled in or the animals that would pop up on king snake or fauna or whatever, there was always the consensus that all these animals end up being male, right? And the idea was that wherever they’re being farmed at, they’re just collecting the eggs and just incubating them at one temp to just hatch them. And there’s no, nobody was thinking, hey, let’s hatch a few females. Let’s hatch a few as males. No, they were just like, let’s put them at 85, whatever it is, it is. And then all those animals would get, you know, smuggled into here. And all those animals that grew up. Majority of the time are male. So they just believed that they weren’t, you know, they were just being farm hatched or whatever in the, in Indo. And that’s how they came to be. That’s why you see a lot of males. That’s the, the gist is that everybody or all the males that you see are because they were, you know, smuggled or temp sexed at whatever temperature they had. And, you know, so these guys are.

Wendy:
[8:26] You know, their temperature sex dependent, or do we know?

Raul:
[8:30] From my understanding.

Wendy:
[8:32] Okay.

Raul:
[8:32] No, they are. There’s a gentleman that I used to correspond with. It’s been a while, but he breeds them. He lives in Australia. His name’s Greg Miles. And he had a group of 3.3 that he was allowed to catch. And Australia gave him the permits to breed them. And he bred them. And he bred them so much or so often that he stopped breeding them because there was no market for them back in Australia.

Wendy:
[8:56] Wow, that’s crazy.

Raul:
[8:58] Yeah. Yeah, he filled the niche for that the need for them so and he’s the one that if you go in a deep dive into you know online you might find his posts there’s a bunch of photos of him swimming with them the greenhouse he built for them hatching sex the whole it’s cool like i mean that’s the inspiration, uh that i i took from him talking to him getting his uh little transcript that

Breeding Efforts Overview

Raul:
[9:23] he did for a presentation and basically trying to do my version of that.

Wendy:
[9:26] Has anyone bred them in the u.s that you know of?

Raul:
[9:31] So someone, private breeders that I’m aware of, no. I mean, if there’s someone out there, I would love to pick their brain, see what happened, what came of it. From my understanding, there was the Bronx Zoo and maybe another zoo that found hatchlings in the exhibit or so forth. But documented that I know of here in the States, no, there was a gentleman recently out of Indonesia that I have on my Facebook that a friend requested that he, you know, he recorded the process of the female laying eggs. He recorded the process of the eggs hatching. And of course, we don’t really, we didn’t really correspond, but it’s nice to see someone else doing it. Myself and I think there’s two or three other guys out there that are also trying. We all have different setups, different ideas of what would work best. And, you know, we’re kind of in a somewhat in an unspoken race to be the first one.

Wendy:
[10:23] A friendly race.

Raul:
[10:25] Yeah. Yeah. I mean, if someone else does it, man, hats off to them. And I’ll probably ask 100 questions. And hopefully there’s no gatekeeping. Right. I mean, at the end of the day.

Wendy:
[10:34] Yeah.

Raul:
[10:35] The variety is just to be enough. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you’ll always be the first person. Right. If you got to be the one that hatches them and breeds them, you’ll always be known as the guy that did it. And so there’s no need to hide or to keep anyone out.

Wendy:
[10:49] Yeah. Because you’re always first, right?

Raul:
[10:52] Yeah. And they’re always going to be, they’re still being imported. I mean, I think it’s crazy that all these animals are being imported because they’re not the best turtle for somebody. They’re cute right now at four or six inches. And yeah, they’re great when you have a 200, 300 gallon aquarium. But once they get 18 inches and you live in a house and you have an HOA, there’s no, what are you doing with that turtle? You know, what are you going to end up doing? You’re going to give it away or so forth. But I always think about that.

Wendy:
[11:22] When you see them either in a pet store or at Daytona and they’re small and they’re adorable and they would fit in a 75-gallon tank. But how long is it going to be until they are? They grow fast.

Raul:
[11:34] Yeah. They do. You know, a four-inch turtle can be six, seven inches within

Captive Care Challenges

Raul:
[11:39] a year. Now, I don’t know why people say they grow slow. They don’t. I mean, I fed mine every other day and he grew like crazy. And yeah, once they get huge, then you’re doing a disservice to the turtle in a 200-gallon aquarium, it being 14, 15 inches, and it could just only go, you know, pace back and forth, three, four feet. I’m not saying that my 1,000-gallon stock tank is the ideal setups for the few animals that are singles that are individually kept in them. But the end goal is to have a big enough pond where I can maybe disperse or put all of them in there and let them all do their thing. And, you know, they’re still going to interact with each other. They’re still going to squabble somewhat, but they can get away. They can have their own space and feel, you know, feel a little bit more at home.

Wendy:
[12:27] So as far as captive care goes, I think the biggest thing you have to keep in mind is just how large they get. They can get over two feet, right?

Raul:
[12:37] Yeah, yeah, yeah. I got a big male, probably 35, 40 pounds, I think. Probably 35 but when you pull he doesn’t look big when you see him but if we were to do I think Anthony I think we might have pulled him out when Anthony came down, big animals and it’s just you know when they get that size is what are you going to do with them and what are you what are 100 plus people who have purchased them as of right now online going to do with them they’re going to end up at those fish rescues zoos i mean i don’t even buy them just because i know that people will want somebody’s going to want you to take them yeah, yeah yeah yeah so i’m not saying it’s a bad idea i’m just saying think about it i mean at the end of the day, they get big. They’re not for everybody. Same thing I tell people with podoc nemus. They’re cool. They’re beautiful as hatchlings. But when you get a turtle that’s two and a half feet long or as an adult, what are you going to do? They can’t take the cold.

Wendy:
[13:36] Yeah. There’s really not a lot of indoor aquariums that they would fit in long-term.

Raul:
[13:42] Yeah. And most zoos and most places that got them don’t want more. They’re limited on how many they can take in. And yeah, it just becomes somewhat of a burden. Unless, you know, I wish I had unlimited funds and I have a rescue and I have,

Aggression and Behavior

Raul:
[13:57] you know, ponds and ponds galore and give them all homes. But, you know, I’m semi-realistic about it and I’m just like, I can’t. Like, unless it’s an animal that works with what I have going on and I can use, I’m interested. Other than that, I’m not, I don’t want to take on more males or more extra animals that we’re just questioning because it’s just, I’m kind of tapped out, basically.

Wendy:
[14:19] Yeah. I have heard that they can be highly aggressive. Have you experienced that?

Raul:
[14:26] So, yeah. I’ve seen it in aquariums where, you know, you house two and they just nip on each other or one gets close and chases the other one. In the pond that we keep them in, I do notice it, but it’s not persistent or it’s not constant. They squabble because one gets in the other one’s face or one gets in front of the other one while it’s eating. But it’s a slight, like, get out of here.

Wendy:
[14:55] So you think it’s maybe space related? like if they’re in close quarters they’re gonna okay i.

Raul:
[15:02] So and i also i i believe it’s possibly also a sex a sex issue like uh two males um because i have some animals in the pond that obviously have nicks and you know bite marks and most of the ones that have the nicks and bite marks appear to be all the males there is what i believe to be an adult female that has very little, to no damage i guess she’s the princess in the tub in the pond um but uh but but yeah i think it’s also with uh males just being boys being boys is basically what i think it is it’s just they rough house they they want the attention or whatever it is that they need or they do to you know as boys it’s just that’s the way they are but and if they can’t get away from each other yeah oh yeah it’s more yeah more reasoning why you see that high aggressiveness in this pond Unfortunately, it’s not clear. It’s not a scaped or filtered pond as much as I would love for it to be crystal clear. It’s not. You could see through the water to some point, and then it gets murky. And I think that’s what helps, right? Is that the turtles, about a foot in or a foot and a half, they can’t see each other anymore, and they can get away. They can bury themselves in the mud. So I think that also helps. And then it’s big enough that you really have to swim around a few times to bump into each other.

Maturity and Reproduction

Wendy:
[16:21] Okay. When do they reach maturity? So when are you going to be able to figure out whether you have a boy or a girl?

Raul:
[16:28] That one, I don’t know.

Wendy:
[16:30] Okay.

Raul:
[16:30] That’s been the million-dollar question because even the females look male.

Wendy:
[16:36] Okay. Because I was reading that they’re saying in the wild it’s 16 to 18 years, which seems like an insane amount of time.

Raul:
[16:44] Yeah. So the male that I have in the pond came from, if I recall correctly, the largest male came from Magdalene Bay in Las Vegas.

Wendy:
[16:56] Oh, okay.

Raul:
[16:57] Magdalene, some hotel.

Wendy:
[16:58] Mandalay Bay?

Raul:
[16:59] Yeah, they had an exhibit. Mandalay Bay, there you go. And I think the female did too. And if I recall correctly, one of the animals is 30 plus years old.

Wendy:
[17:07] Oh, wow.

Raul:
[17:08] The female, yeah, the female I think is 20-ish. I might be off. And again, it’s been a minute since I’ve talked to the original owner of them. But I’ve heard 10 years, right, of them to reach maturity or some sort of maturity. But like I said, it’s hard to say that because majority of the animals end up being male. And a male could probably breed five, four years in if it gets up to size. And then the females, you know, they’re not common. And the few that are, I don’t think anybody’s reported any eggs to say, hey, in eight years she laid eggs. So it might be true. I mean, there’s an animal in there that’s about 10, 12 years old, and she’s not as big as the princess that we’re calling the largest female. She’s 14 inches, 16 inches. And then this female that I’ve been told is a nagling female, have video of her climbing out of this gentleman’s setup to lay. She’s about 18, almost 20 inches. And she’s big. But she’s not the biggest, but she’s big.

Raul:
[18:14] I was going to say the only way that I, so some of these larger animals I acquired through a gentleman that was, he was trying to breed them in Oklahoma and he was, he had a crazy setup, really cool. He had a warehouse. He had all this equipment for them. It was like a 40 by 80 foot pond. The gentleman had an amazing setup, but he was struggling to keep the water warm during the winters. When I went to pick up these turtles in March of last year, it was 20 degrees in his town when I went to pick them up at night. I drove from Florida all the way to Oklahoma to pick them up in person because he gave them to me, right? Out of my passion for working with them and working with them, he felt like he could trust me to take the reins from him. So out of you know to show my appreciation i drove to meet him in person pick up the animals of course that’s the least i can do right it’s instead of being like oh noah ship them to me thanks i i went in person met him saw the setups pack the animals but um the only way i i believe i have an adult female is because when we brought them back i set them up in stock tanks while the pond was being completed and one of the stock tanks has how’s the pair this pond had nothing in it, just an empty pond, an empty stock tank, excuse me.

Raul:
[19:36] Only the pair of fly rivers in there. There was no other turtle species in there with them or anything. And sometime in April, when I started getting around to finishing up the pond and moving some animals around, I found about what I believe to be maybe six different— I found egg shows that I believe were about six eggs, give or take, in the pond.

Raul:
[19:56] So I believe she laid eggs in the water. They ate the eggs because obviously there was no land. There was nothing for them to come out. And I didn’t have anything really set up for them to come out because it was, it just, you know, they’re, they’re, they’re different shaped and then their, their, their ability to climb out of the water is different than a snake neck turtle or a slider. So I didn’t believe, or I didn’t think to put anything in them for the delay, but there was eggshells in the water, which I don’t believe my kids would mess with me and, you know, crack eggshells. Yeah, that would be crazy. So I’d like to believe that she laid eggs and that it is a female. The gentleman who had them has video footage of them coming out of the water, digging nest cavities. He even got a few eggs, but they didn’t hatch.

Egg Laying and Incubation

Raul:
[20:45] So that’s exciting.

Wendy:
[20:47] I mean, like exciting and horrifying at the same time.

Raul:
[20:50] Yeah yeah but yeah so so i like to believe that there’s at least one female there now i haven’t done any endoscopy type of stuff you know work on them i’d like to but i also hear it’s kind of a nightmare because they do have to do surgical cuts insert the camera so they can’t just like, yeah yeah so to have a water turtle that’s really aquatic have an incision on its you know yeah that I couldn’t say and why. So it’s.

Wendy:
[21:21] You worry about infection. Yeah.

Raul:
[21:24] Yep. And I’ve been trying to talk to people that have kept them or people that I know know what they’re doing and ask them, you know, how can we determine the sex? You know, and there’s different ways I’ve been told that, you know, we can. Basically hold the turtle and press in their flippers, their arms and back legs, and kind of like squeeze them in. And that will cause the males to invert.

Wendy:
[21:44] To evert, yeah.

Raul:
[21:45] Or evert their hemipenes and so forth. But that’s a whole job in itself. It’s myself, another party, somebody else helping me. We’re all, you know, somebody documenting.

Wendy:
[21:57] You’re picking up a 40-pound turtle and hugging it.

Raul:
[22:00] Yeah, I keep trying to restrain it, right? Because they do scratch, even though they have flippers, they have nails, and they scratch you up, and they’re big animals. So it’s a job in itself. And eventually, I’d like to really get down and confirm what’s the actual sex so I can be sure of what I need or what I need to do. Maybe I have too many males. Maybe I have not enough males or something. Yeah.

Wendy:
[22:25] So that was actually something I was going to ask you. What’s the range of your water temperature in the pond?

Raul:
[22:32] So back last year when we got the pond going, that was my biggest fear is to have a large body of water and not be able to maintain the temperature, right? Because some of these people…

Wendy:
[22:44] Yeah, because you can’t heat it, right?

Raul:
[22:46] Correct. Like you could try to heat it. I just don’t know if the heating elements would suffice or if it would do anything. So there’s people like Wayne Hill and Joel that they do these large ponds, but they do liners and they do greenhouses over them, right?

Wendy:
[23:02] Okay.

Raul:
[23:03] I don’t have the means. I don’t have the means yet to do a greenhouse over the pond. But in my discussion with the Joelle, if the water lettuce or the water plants grow dense enough, it’s like a blanket. Okay.

Wendy:
[23:17] Almost like a solar blanket. Yeah.

Raul:
[23:19] Yeah. Yeah. So this pond is fed by the well. I have a well that runs 24-7. And it feeds this pond. The well, I think, comes out at 72-74. Maybe 72 is the lowest.

Raul:
[23:33] And it also has, so it’s being fed by the well, and I also have our tubs, not all of them, but our stock tanks. I have a side or a row of tubs that have all turtles from Australia, Indonesia, or New Guinea. And that row of tubs has overflows that are fed by the well, right? So each one is being fed individually by well water, and then it overflows into a drain. And that drain drains into the tub as well, into the pond as well. So there’s two two sources of water there’s a source of water coming from four tubs with all indo-asian turtle species that flow into the pond and in the well water so last year i put, temperature sensors to kind of keep an eye out because i really was concerned that hey one of these super cold nights it’s gonna be too cold and then i’ve basically made an oath that if it got down to a temperature that i felt was crazy i was gonna get in the water and pull them out excuse me one by one yeah i had a sometime last year in january yeah i did so i’m.

Raul:
[24:35] Get everybody out one by one in the individual tub and put them in the garage where i keep some animals during the winter that obviously can’t be outside all year or all winter but yeah the game plan was i’m gonna get in the water i’m gonna go with my flashlights if it’s at night and you know do get get dirty and cold uh we did have a scare where our well pump went out last year during the day and that night it was gonna get down to the 40s and uh and the well pump obviously is feeding all other tubs with water. So imagine a hundred different turtles, you know, a hundred different turtles with no, nothing to keep them warm there. Now there’s some that, you know, no big deal that 40s is no big issue.

Wendy:
[25:13] They wouldn’t care. Yeah.

Raul:
[25:14] Yeah. But all the South American stuff, all the rare, all the, you know, tropical stuff, I’d have to get in there, drain the waters to their empty, pull out all the turtles, forget the fish. There’s fish I keep in each tubs just out of, you know, enjoyment, right? Some of them have cichlids, some have guppies i’d have to basically sacrifice them for the turtles which at the end of the day the turtles to me are kind of the more important things i hate to say that but but that was the the contingency plan right is to get in there pull everybody out keep them in the garage until i got the well going, luckily the well it wasn’t an issue and we got the well working again but um temperatures have fluctuated so on the coldest night and of course this is what the sensor says based on where it was, Obviously, I’m still trying to learn how to do all this, but I had the sensor run or placed at the bottom, but not the deepest part of the pond. So it was placed somewhat in the middle or not the middle, but, you know, by the edge of the pond, but three feet, four feet into the bottom of the initial bank. And it read at 68 degrees. Of course, there’s about another two feet of water further down or deeper and then about a foot of mud.

Raul:
[26:28] And I’m believing, I think, from what the temperature data gave me or the graph, 68 was the coldest and the warmest was 74. And I can attest that it does stay warm. So if you get in the pond during the winter, which I did a video last year, it was like December 31st.

Water Temperature Management

Raul:
[26:48] And I was in the pond and it was warm. Like the parts of the mud that I stepped in were really like, wow, there’s heat here. I guess it’s the decaying leaves, the soil and all that. It was pretty toasty. And it’s been like that since. We had a 38-degree night recently. All I ran was the well. And the water was warm to the touch. Of course, warm to the touch for what we think is warm, maybe, you know, 70 degrees when it’s 30 degrees outside or so forth. But the turtles look none less for wear. They all look good. Obviously, I don’t know if you’ve seen the videos, but I post videos like every other day of them and they’re doing their thing.

Wendy:
[27:29] I’ve seen videos from your pond at night where just steam is coming off of it.

Raul:
[27:34] Oh, yeah.

Wendy:
[27:34] So I was wondering how warm it is.

Raul:
[27:37] Pretty warm compared to the outside temps and i you know and yes and you can feel the temperature if you go outside on a cool day or cold day and the sun’s hitting the pond and you put your hand underneath the water plants they do seem to hold some heat of course once you start moving your hand further down to the water gets a little bit cooler but the surface level it’s pretty warm and then there’s a temperature drop and then it seems like it gets warmer at the very bottom as well Oh.

Wendy:
[28:03] That’s really interesting. We have a 300-gallon above-ground pond outside, and man, it’ll go down to like 45, 50. It gets cold being above-ground, not having that insulation. So the fact that yours ranges between 68 and 74, like, that’s amazing. That’s with above ground, you can get crazy fluctuations where it’s 95 in the summer or 50 in the winter.

Raul:
[28:32] Do you run any filter or well water on it or no?

Wendy:
[28:36] We do have well water, but I haven’t set that up because it’s, you know, it’s not a tub, it’s a liner. Yeah. But I might think about putting an overflow or something in it because I don’t think our well water is as warm as yours, but it’s got to be warmer than what that pond gets to. Yes, absolutely. I’m going to have to come up with something once the snake necks have to go outside. Yeah, because all my stock tubs. I might pick your brain.

Raul:
[29:04] All my stock tubs are above ground, but I do tarp. If it gets below 50 or below 55, I tarp all the blue stock tanks. Excuse me. And then strap them down to hold the heat. And then, of course, the well water runs all night. There’s been times, I think the year before it was 28 or 29, but there was frost on the ground. And, you know, I’ll go and pull the cover and reach in and feel the water and it’s toasty. I’m thankful for the well. I’m thankful for this setup because I used to put water heaters in my stock tanks. When I first moved out here and we first started, you know, keeping them outside, Like I didn’t have a well, a well water line ran or running towards the tub. So it was just water set up, you know, standing water all day with a heat, a heater. And of course, heaters fail. So I had a heater fail where the light turned on, but the element did not work. And I lost a fly river.

Wendy:
[29:59] Oh, so it looked like it was working.

Raul:
[30:00] Yeah. And it wasn’t.

Wendy:
[30:02] Oh, no.

Raul:
[30:03] It wasn’t. So now, you know, these, the well is, it’s keeps, it gives me peace of mind, but I still go out there. I still go check. I still go to see, make sure no waterline bursted or something came off and is leaking or whatever. But, I do tarp them and I do recommend the well just because it will keep them pretty toasty. Even if it’s, you know, 70 degrees is a lot better than 60, 50, 40. So you can keep the water at 70. You’re set.

Wendy:
[30:31] All right. So I know with these guys, you’ll actually go in and swim with them. And it looked like from some of the videos where, you know, Anthony and Kevin were there that they’ll just like swim right up to you.

Raul:
[30:45] There is seven fly rivers in the pond out of the seven there are three who are charismatic annoying, um that just won’t leave you alone and it’s one female the the big female and then two, juveniles or semi sub-adults and they’ll swim right up to you they’ll prod you with their nose and it’s it’s kind of scary because you don’t know what their intentions are they’re swimming up to you. You feel their faces bumping up to your skin. The big female has this weird, thing of about like uh it’s almost like she’s trying to hump you or mount you, and i don’t know if it’s a aggressive or get out of my pond or what are you i’m so interested, but that’s the scary part because you don’t know if they’re gonna bite and i’m sure the bite’s not the worst thing in the world and it might hurt but you just can’t tell what they’re doing and it’s the water’s murky right so all you know is that they’re bumping into you and they’re putting They’re like.

Wendy:
[31:42] What are you doing down there?

Raul:
[31:44] Yeah, yeah. They’re putting their face right up to your leg or your thigh. And it’s, you know, a big pinch in between the legs. It’s going to make me jump out of the water. But they come up to you. You can push them away. You can, you know, place them across the pond and they’ll come right back up to you. It’s basically the same turtles that you’ll see in the videos where I go and maybe clean out the outtake or the overflow for the pond. They’ll see me there and they’ll just come up. to see what I’m up to. The other day I got in to pull out some baddiger that are housed with them and I had to pull out the three nosy fly river turtles because I would not get anything done because they’re just on me. And it’s, I love it because you see other videos of people swimming with them and they don’t come up to you. They’re swimming away from you. They’re kind of scared of these three. You can, you can, I mean, throw them, push them, push them hard or, you know, So take them out of the water, put them on one end, they’ll find their way back to you and they’ll be up on you.

Interaction with Turtles

Raul:
[32:42] And it’s great if you know that they’re not going to bite. But the fact that I’ve been there and I’ve had to kind of push them off. Yeah, yeah. And I would hate to have someone come visit and go in through, do the experience with me and then they get bit. And then I’m like, I’m sorry. I didn’t know they were going to bite you.

Wendy:
[32:57] Yeah.

Raul:
[32:58] Right. And they’re not looking for food because I’ve only gone in there a few times with the food in my hands. All the other times I get in there just to look for stuff and search. So it’s not that they’re coming up to me looking for food, but it’s, you know, I’m still trying to figure out what’s the, what’s that, why are they doing that behavior is? Behavior is, yeah. Is it an aggressive, like get out of my area, get my territory? Or are they inquisitive? They’re like, hey, this is something new. There’s a big manatee in our, a water cow in the pond. And we’re just trying to figure out what, what he’s all about, but it’s, it’s fun. And it’s a little bit scary at the same time.

Availability and Market Insights

Wendy:
[33:34] All right. So these guys, I wouldn’t say they’re necessarily easy to get, but it seems like they’re fairly available if you’re looking for one. I just, you know, peeked on Morph Market and there was a couple of them for sale.

Raul:
[33:50] They’re everywhere.

Wendy:
[33:51] Like $1,000 to $1,500, which is probably good because you don’t want this animal to be an impulse buy just because of the sheer size. And, you know, even at that price point, and you’ve seen, you’re still going to get people that are going to buy them because they’re super cute and be like, oh, I’ll figure it out. And just not underestimate the sheer size of them as adults.

Raul:
[34:19] Exactly. Yeah. So I got the group of animals from that gentleman in Oklahoma. I had another animal given to me out of California as well. Because same thing. Well, the owner, obviously the turtle outgrew its pond. And the owner was moving and he was moving somewhere cold and he didn’t want to do another pond. I mean, it’s, they’re going to be the next somewhat sulcata, right? They’re just, you know, there’s a bunch of them coming in. I’m sure the CPP is going to have a ton of them down the line. Maybe not this year, maybe not next year, but in a few years, that’s going to be a turtle where you’ve always wanted one. Well, we have 10 inch, 12 inch animals if you want to give them a home.

Wendy:
[34:58] So get your ponds ready now, right?

Raul:
[35:01] Yeah, yeah. Get set up. Make sure you know what you got. I always, you know, I hope that people have the space for them. You know, I’m lucky enough to have some acreage and I’m able to do some of the things I’m able to do because I live in a place where I can do it. The weather lends itself to making it happen. But I’m sure it’s super hard for people that keep them up north. Even if they do have the space, I’m sure the money is crazy to, you know, the water or the light bill, the pumps, the heaters.

Wendy:
[35:32] The filters, the heater.

Raul:
[35:34] Yeah. Yeah, all that, yeah. So definitely do your research. It’s going to get big. They’re not for everyone. I get it. They’re cute. They’re adorable when they’re babies.

Wendy:
[35:46] And they get big quick.

Raul:
[35:47] Super adorable, right?

Wendy:
[35:49] They do. I don’t think you have.

Raul:
[35:51] You eat them well and keep them warm? Yeah, I don’t think you have a 10-year plan for them. No, I believe within three to four years, they can get 10 inches, and then it becomes a big turtle. And maybe the charm is no longer there because they don’t look so cute being 10 inches, but they’re definitely…

Long-term Care Considerations

Raul:
[36:12] What’s the word you know you got to have the right setup you got to think about this at the long in the long end it’s a turtle for it’s an animal it you know you’re the caretaker you got to think that hey this thing’s gonna live 30 plus years with you um i think i think bronx zoo has animals that are 50 plus years old right i’m gonna keep mine as far as long as i can physically and mentally able to keep them and maintain them now i do got to come up with some game plan at the end of the day that if, you know, my family does not wish to continue any of my legacy, then that they go or, you know, get distributed to people that I know can continue, you know, doing something, doing something with them and not just getting them and then reselling them or so forth.

Wendy:
[36:53] Yeah. Yeah. So is there anything that we missed on captive care for them?

Raul:
[36:59] No, they’re easy. They’re pretty straightforward. I see a lot of people make a big deal about water hardness and temperatures and that they need certain pHs. We have naturally hard water here. I use well water. I don’t use no special buffers. I don’t do no special limestone or calcium things.

Raul:
[37:20] I do see people worry about when they get these animals that are recently imported or from these dealers, they come with some film. They might have some kind of they seem to have a shedding issue or their skin looks a little bit fuzzy or they have some kind It’s not fungal, I don’t believe. It’s just something that they get during being acclimated and stress. But people worry immediately that it’s a fungal issue, a fungal concern. I just tell people, keep them warm, add salt or sand in the water. The sand, I think, helps because the turtle will bury itself in the sand. And whatever little film or excess, I don’t know what it is, what it’s called. It’s like a film that’s on them. But it seems to happen when they’re stressed. The sand will help abrasive and take it off, and they won’t have all the little white dots that people automatically think fungal issues. They just stress for a little bit. You know, just give them time to get their bearings and then they’ll eat. And they’re pretty straightforward. Now, if they don’t eat for you, any of the options of the wafers, berries, fruit, bananas, all those typical things they’ll eat, then there is something to be worried about. But they eat everything. I mean, they’re not picky. And if they are picky, it’s only because they’ve been fed something for whatever time, months or a year or so. But they’ll take anything.

Conclusion and Resources

Wendy:
[38:41] Okay. Good to know. Wow. Thank you so much for joining me today. For our listeners, be sure to subscribe so you don’t miss our next episode. If people have questions for you about fly rivers, where can they find you?

Raul:
[38:54] I’m always active on the turtle or TTPG turtle forum or Facebook group, excuse me. And then as well, every now and then I’ll share the same fly river information on the fly river forums on Facebook as well. And then I’m also on Instagram.

Wendy:
[39:09] All right, great. Thank you so much.

Raul:
[39:11] Thank you, Wendy. Have a great one. Bye.