Hiya, as you're aware I have two gorgeous musk turtles.

Tonight I noticed that there are loads & loads of tiny flies in the tank on the glass just above the waterline. What causes these? I've never had a problem with them before? I checked the water and the readings are fine.

I haven't done a full water change for a few weeks, as trying to get the new filter settled. Every week I top up the water as it seems to evaporate quickly. So in effect it gets a 20 - 25% water change regulary. The water is clear. Theres brown algae on the bottom in places, but not too bad now - not as bad as it was anyhow! I have weed in there - can't remember which sort tho! They are feed pellet food - I do put greens in there but they don't touch them. I have also tried them with prawns, muscles, dried crayfish, dried snails, crickets, dried mealworms, frozen bloodworms, frozen turtle food.....

They have UV, I tried heat lamps, but one they never came out to bask, and two it made the tank too hot and the algae worse. The water is heated but not very high.

Any advice?

Hi Dawn,

Have you put any plants (non aquatic) in there with soil? I get these little flies all the time with my box turtles when I use a bag of potting compost in their substrate. The eggs are in the soil and the warmth and humidity make them hatch.

Could even come from soil elsewhere and the light and humidity have attracted the flies to the tank.

They're harmless by the way. They like fruit.

Brilliant I'll rush out and buy them some tomorrow

Ok, so they're not gonna take over my house then... thats good!

There isn't any soil in their tank or near to it. The only soil is in my hatchlings table but thats in a different room?

Does everything else I'm doing sound ok to you?

BTW with the Eheim filter I used to do a 3/4 water change more or less every week!!!! Never had any problems with flies or algae then!!!!

Yeah it all sounds fine. I dont worry about algae, it happens.

Be careful with the top ups die to evaporation. These dont replace water changes. You have the same waste products (nitrates etc) in the tank so topping it up just dilutes them again,  changing the water removes them. With a new filter keep up the water changes or you can overload the filter, there aren't enough good bacteria to deal with it.

With the lamps and UV, people have different experiences with musks.
My mud turtles bask but hit the water if they hear me coming. Older turtles are more likely to bask so bear with it. You could just try a lower wattage bulb in the heat lamp or I still recommend removing the canopy altogether and rigging up the UV another way.
Turtles get a lot of D3 from their food too.

Are you giving them chunks of cuttlefish? Mine eat tons.

Brilliant thanks (again!) Dave, I shall change the way I do top-ups. I'm also going to an aquatic centre/pet shop place today so all get some cuttlefish and fresh weed.

How do you have your UV rigged up? Any chance of some pictures? I will look into getting a new tank - I think they do lighting canopies that go with them, so will investigate

My UV tubes are just cable tied to a strip of wood thats longer than the tank/tub. Not pretty, but effective.

And my cameras broke at the mo.

Brilliant, I shall look into that, I can't decide whether to get them a new tank yet so I will mull over it for a few days before making my mind up - got an annoying habit of rushing in and making mistakes! So will chew over all the options, work out cost etc.

I'm going to do a full change today so that I can clean the tank right out, bought new filters yesterday, got some nitrate stuff and some new weeds to go in, so going to give it all a good old clean. The bloke in the shop yesterday said it could take up to 6mths for new filters to settle down properly, so I'm not to worried at mo. They also advised to clean filter properly once a month.