Painted Terrapin

1 Overview

The Painted Terrapin (Callagur borneoensis) is one of the more distinctive members of the painted turtle genus. Its carapace looks like a watermelon, and a red streak across the head makes it look more vivid. Distributed in Malaysia, Indonesia, and surrounding areas, it is a relatively large aquatic turtle.

Chinese name: Painted Terrapin

Chinese aliases: Painted turtle, Mud turtle, Three-lined turtle, Watermelon turtle

English name: Painted Terrapin

Binomial name: Callagur borneoensis

Kingdom: Animalia

Phylum: Chordata

Subphylum: Vertebrata

Class: Reptilia

Order: Testudines

Family: Geoemydidae

Genus: Callagur

Species: Painted Terrapin

Distribution: Malaysia, Indonesia.

Appearance: Carapace up to 76 cm long, pale gray or brown, with a high central dome, broad at front and narrow at rear, oval in shape.

Behavior: A brackish-water aquatic turtle. Adults live mainly where harbors, rivers, and seas meet. In captivity it should live in low-salinity brackish water; otherwise its skin turns white or it develops saprolegniasis. Long-term fresh water is fatal.

Reproduction: Oviparous. The breeding season runs June–August. Each clutch has 12 eggs, 70 mm long and 40 mm wide.

Diet: Carnivorous, feeding on worms, snails, shrimp, and small fish, and also eating plant stems and leaves.

2 Physical Characteristics

The Painted Terrapin is also called the watermelon turtle, named for its watermelon-like carapace pattern. It is the least colorful member of the painted turtle genus, but changes somewhat in the breeding season, when males develop a bright red head.

1. Appearance

The Painted Terrapin is a large freshwater turtle, its carapace up to 76 cm long and mostly over 2.5 kg. Pale gray or brown, with a high central dome, broad at front and narrow at rear, oval in shape. A thick black stripe runs down the center of the carapace like watermelon markings, and each marginal scute bears a large black blotch. The rear carapace edge is serrated. The plastron is pale yellow, narrow and long.

The bridge is pale yellow and relatively wide. The head is gray or brown with a thick central stripe that differs by sex. The eye orbits and face are black; the snout turns up and is black. The neck is brown-gray; the upper jaw has no central notch. The limbs are gray-black with webbing between the toes. The tail is short.

2. Sexual Dimorphism

The Painted Terrapin’s appearance differs in the breeding season. Females have a brown-olive crown with brown crown stripes and a short tail. Males have a gray crown with bright red crown stripes and a long tail. Outside the breeding season the male’s crown is brownish-red and darker.

3 Care & Husbandry

The two most important aspects of Painted Terrapin care are enclosure setup and food supply. Generally it lives in brackish water; providing only plain water causes irreversible shell rot, and in diet it leans carnivorous.

1. Causes of Shell Rot

The Painted Terrapin lives in river estuaries, so it cannot stay in fresh water long. Simply sunning the water does not help—within three weeks it reacts strongly. Beyond the discomfort, the skin disease alone is unbearable: without salt it develops severe skin rot, and in serious cases skin ulceration. Generally, mild skin rot eases with a little salt added to the water; for ulceration, remove the lesion, add gentamicin to the water, and apply chlortetracycline eye ointment to the lesion.

2. Diet

Juvenile Painted Terrapins lean carnivorous, so feed more animal prey such as fish, shrimp, beef, earthworms, and bloodworms, cut into suitable small pieces for swallowing. Some keepers find they like sweeter produce such as corn, bananas, and pears; you can also try aquatic plants like Vallisneria, hornwort, and stonewort to balance nutrition.

4 Housing

Outdoor keeping of the Painted Terrapin is convenient, as temperature and humidity need not be controlled artificially. A suitable environment lets the turtle regulate its own temperature, promoting health, more natural hibernation, and safe overwintering.

Hatchlings and juveniles can be kept in plastic tubs or glass tanks with water just above the carapace. For scale keeping, build ponds indoors or outdoors. Adult ponds are concrete and brick, sized to site, with water 30–50 cm deep. Walls rise 50 cm above the water, smoothly finished to prevent escape. Inside, place a suitably sized concrete slab tilted at 30° and half-exposed as both a feeding and basking platform and a shaded hiding spot.

New ponds are generally 100–500 m² with water kept about 80–120 cm deep. A 30° slope lets turtles climb out to rest and lay eggs. Around the pond, 100 cm out, build a 50 cm brick wall with a 30 cm foundation in the soil and a 10 cm inward eave. The surrounding ground serves as basking, resting, and nesting space. Nesting sites need 20 cm of sand for egg-laying. Stocking density: about 3–5 breeding turtles, 10–15 adults, 20–30 juveniles, or 50–100 hatchlings per m². Polyculture in fish ponds: 100–500 per mu.

5 Feeding

Feed mainly animal matter—small fish and shrimp, snail and clam meat, earthworms, and animal organs, raw or cooked—supplemented with a little grain, fruit, and vegetables, plus multivitamins and trace elements. Wash and chop to a swallowable size according to the turtle’s size; adults can be fed directly. Grains should be softened first. Daily ration is 5–10% of body weight, slightly more in summer. Feed once each at 8–9 a.m. and 4–5 p.m., with fixed feeding spots. In fish-pond polyculture, just add fish feed; no separate feeding needed. Sick or oxygen-depleted fish make good feed and help prevent fish-disease transmission.