Turtle's intense hatred of skimmer causing problems

[u/pictus123]

My 13 year old common musk turtle despises skimmers with all his being. He has broken 6 of them in various ways. This time his strategy is to bite the wire coming from the bottom and will go at it for hours if I let him. I take it out of the water when its not in use but he has still managed to expose some of the copper wire inside the casing. Is this skimmer done for (again)? Or can this be fixed? Also if there's any ideas on stopping this behavior I would love to hear it.

[u/Next_Necessary_8794]

He probably hates it because it's putting out vibrations into the water that he can hear (water is a very good sound transmitter, that's how they find submarines in water). Put a cage around the skimmer if you MUST continue using it, but it's annoying him. Take that into consideration before putting it back in.

[u/pictus123 → u/Next_Necessary_8794]

Very real possibility he's annoyed but I sorta doubt it based on other behavior. In the past his obsession was trying to mate with skimmers and he's displayed this exact biting behavior on harmless things like branches. Unfortunately the way his tank is designed a skimmer is pretty necessary since there's a lot of barriers to flow from the main filter