Here are some pictures of our current setup. We are going to put some nice ground cover over the mud to make it look better. I was going to use pine bark mulch. Does anyone know if that is safe for turtles? They spend most of their time in the water or on their rocks, but will occasionally do a lap around the atrium, so whatever ground cover we use has to be safe for them. We had some aquatic plants but they devoured them. Any suggestions for aquatic plants that won't be eaten so quickly? I'd like to add some color and thought floating plants would provide more hiding places for them too.
We are new at keeping RES and plan to upgrade to an even larger pond and better filter in the next few months. So far, this is a huge improvement over their previous living conditions. A friend of ours wanted to get rid of them so we adopted them. They were living in a tiny (maybe 20 g) aquarium with that colored gravel you see in fish tanks at the bottom. I figure this pond is better than what they had and they do seem happy.
Link to album:
http://s1052.photobucket.com/albums/s455/bimzer/
Some pics: