You Bought A Turtle Hatchling. It Will Outlive Your Mortgage

All Photos Credit Donna Moot

I watched an invasive species taking over a city's waterways at 17. Forty years later, I'm still dealing with the consequences — this time in New Zealand.

Turtle Rescue and Rehoming

The day the Christchurch earthquakes hit (Feb 2011), I had 33 turtles. Within 72 hours, I had 45, no running water, one unbroken tank, and people arriving at my door with animals in their arms and devastation on their faces. They all said the same thing: they'd come back for the turtle when life settled down. None of them ever did.

That moment — standing in the rubble of my city, surrounded by other people's turtles — is where this story really lives. But to understand how I got there, you need to go back to Singapore in the 1970s, to a teenager watching turtles in a city waterway, and having no idea she was looking at a slow-motion ecological disaster.

Singapore, and a problem I didn't know I was seeing

I was 17, staying with a local family for three weeks. The wildlife fascinated me — the flora, the fauna, and particularly the turtles that appeared throughout the city's waterways and gardens. I'd never seen one before. I didn't know then that Singapore's native freshwater terrapins and turtles were being pushed out by Red Eared Sliders, an invasive species spreading through those same waterways. I was just a teenager, delighted by turtles.

Back in New Zealand, the interest stayed. In my mid-twenties, hatchlings started appearing in pet shops. I bought two small, appealing things about 3 cm long. What followed was well-intentioned ignorance. No internet to consult. No specialist vets. Just pet shop staff with limited knowledge and considerable confidence. My turtles ended up in a small tank with inadequate lighting, no proper filtration, and the wrong food.

Somehow, they survived. They were both male, and as they matured, the territorial aggression escalated. Bite wounds to shells and limbs. A tank far too small for two growing animals. My one surviving male is 40 years old now. He's missing parts of his feet, bitten off by his tankmate decades ago. His shell grew stunted and deformed from confinement. No amount of better care later could fix that.

I eventually moved them to a pond. The improvement in their condition was immediate and obvious. I started learning what I should have known from the start and began trying to help other turtle owners avoid the same mistakes. Then a local vet asked if I'd foster stray turtles for the Canterbury SPCA. That was 20 years ago. I said yes without really understanding what I was agreeing to.

The earthquake, and 45 turtles with nowhere to go

By the time the earthquake hit, the rescue operation had grown steadily. Thirty-three turtles. A functioning setup. Then the ground moved, the water stopped, and people started arriving.

The stories were heartbreaking in their specificity. Destroyed homes. Crushed belongings. A turtle in a box because there was nothing left of the tank. Every person promised to return. Every person had every intention of doing so. None of them came back. I ended up organising a temporary evacuation to the Napier Aquarium, managing 45 animals with a fraction of the usual resources.

The media coverage that followed the earthquakes did one useful thing: it made visible a problem that had been growing quietly for years. New Zealand had accumulated a significant population of unwanted turtles, and there was almost nowhere for them to go.

By the time an owner notices a subtle change in behaviour or condition, it's often already too late to treat effectively.

Why turtles become problems — and why it keeps happening

Red-eared Sliders can live for 50 years. That single fact explains most of what goes wrong. The child who falls in love with a hatchling grows up and moves out. The owner ages. The family emigrates. The turtle, now potentially decades into its life, becomes a complication nobody planned for.

The instinct is to release it. People believe they're doing something kind — returning the animal to nature. What they're actually doing is releasing one of the world's top 100 most invasive species into a local waterway. An adult female can reach 30 cm in shell length, weigh 3 kg, and lay fertilised clutches for up to three years after a single mating. She stores sperm in specialised glands in her oviducts. One released female can seed a waterway for years without any further contact with a male. The same dynamic I watched unfold in Singapore's waterways at 17 is now unfolding here.

Breeders are still selling hatchlings online across New Zealand, shipping them in boxes of sphagnum moss with minimal care information. The pet shops mostly provide better guidance than they used to — equipment has improved, food options have improved, and social media communities share good advice. But the pipeline of underprepared owners continues, and the rescues absorb the consequences.

What keeping a turtle actually involves

Turtles need clean water above everything else. They urinate five times the amount they defecate, and tank water can look perfectly clear while becoming toxic. That means weekly water changes, minimum — a commitment the enthusiastic 18-year-old buyer of a 3 cm hatchling rarely thinks through to its conclusion 50 years down the line.

The basic setup: a 120 cm aquarium at minimum, a basking platform with at least 30 cm water depth, reptile UVB and heat lighting above it, and a large canister filter that still doesn't replace the water changes. Males can live out their lives in a well-maintained tank. Females are a different matter. Once they reach around 15 cm shell length, they need access to soil for egg-laying. Females kept in glass tanks without that access reabsorb eggs, drop them in the water, or eventually become egg-bound and die. Many spend years climbing out of tanks in distress, falling, and cracking their shells. A cracked shell — from a fall, a dog bite, or a car — can take years of rehabilitation. It is the animal's skeleton. The damage is serious.

Illness develops slowly and hides well. By the time an owner notices something is off, the condition has usually been progressing for months. New Zealand has a handful of vets with genuine expertise in exotic reptiles. Most refuse to see turtles or can offer only limited support. That gap falls to the rescue centres: photos assessed by message, phone calls, emails, and diagnosis attempted from a distance. About three-quarters of the contacts I receive come down to inadequate environment, diet, or care at some point in the animal's life.

Telling someone that what they've been doing for 20 years has harmed their animal is a conversation that can go many different ways. Sometimes the owner makes the changes. Sometimes they surrender a desperately sick turtle because they can't face the scale of what's needed. You learn not to judge. People do their best with what they know at the time. I certainly did.

Seventy-six turtles, and what I'd tell my younger self

I'm currently caring for 76 turtles across four species. Some arrived sick, some arrived unwanted, some came from owners who loved them and simply couldn't keep them any more. The pond area under the palm tree is where the good moments happen. Distressed owners come and sit there, and you can watch the tension leave them as the turtles swim past. Some surrender animals they've had for decades. That takes real courage — admitting that you can no longer provide what the animal needs. I have enormous respect for people who make that call.

Rescue work is hard, often sad, and completely worth doing. I wouldn't change it. I would, if I'm honest, have started a little younger — though I suspect the work finds you when it's ready to, not when it's convenient.

The problem I watched beginning in Singapore half a century ago is still unfolding. The turtles are still arriving. And somewhere out there right now, a hatchling is sitting in a box of sphagnum moss in transit to someone who doesn't yet know what they've taken on.

This article was written for WReNNZ

By Donna Moot, Turtle Rescue and Rehoming, Christchurch

If you have concerns about a turtle in your care, reach out before the situation becomes a crisis.