fishless cycle but with turtles

It's like plowing a field and then only planting 1/2 the field.
The other parts will get weeds(algae in our case).

You can clean and add herbivores(weed the field yourself) till things fill in, or use the Dry start method(see article threads), which cycles the bacteria, as well as allows for the foreground plants to fill in nicely,.

Going cheap on the initial planting is one of the major common mistakes made in new tank start ups.

Get lots of plants, this is why local clubs and friends can really help when starting a new tank, then it's not so costly and the quality is 5X better than mail order.
Turtle waste is extremely rich, I'd stay away from that.
Increasing temp should help, to about 82-84F.

But the dry start will help a lot, except with some stem plants, swords, Crypts, any foreground weed, all do well, and there's no work involved, just wait 3-6 weeks, then fill the tank, add the stem plants that do not respond well to terrarium culture.

Since the sediment is saturated, and there's plant roots and other sources of organic nutrients, the bacteria grow much faster and establish larger colonies than that of NH3 based fishless cycling. Once there's enough plant biomass, the plants can take over and really add to the bacterial cycling.


Regards,
Tom Barr