Hello! I am new to this forum and like the site so I'm looking forward to learning more about our RES. I've had an RES before, but he somehow got sick or wasn't getting the right nutrition; he passed about 6 years ago.
I now have a RES and got him in November; the store estimated him at about 6 months old and is about 5-6" long (which based on what I'm reading, his tail seems longer and may be a male; if not we have a female named Crush ). Crush has a 55 gallon tank that we fill about half way; has a filter, water heater, floating basking rock, UVB lamp (this one is on 24/7).
Over the last few weeks, seems like he would go through a few days of wanting more food, then not eating as much. I thought maybe it was growth spurt, but now since reading some info on this site, we might be overfeeding him; the last few days he gets overly excited when we wake up and some times throughout the day. We use round pellets bought from Petco and the last week we've also been giving sun-dried shrimp as a treat. I've seen some posts on the good/bad foods to give him, but still wonder what is actually good (I want to give a variety, but also don't want to have 6 different veggies on hand if we know he likes one or two of them). He is swimming fine and is under his basking lamp every day, nearly all day from when we turn the light on to when we turn it off.
From now on, we will maintain the daily pellets (does this mean once a day?) and shrimp as a treat, but I would like to start adding the veggies/fruits/protein to his diet as well.