Hello there,
So this isn't about my turtle, but it's about a Chinese restaurant in my town that has some turtles in it. The pond is awfully shallow, maybe a few inches deep, and houses about 6 or more turtles (all RES except one that seemed to be a young yellow-bellied slider). I can't tell how large but I'd guess the pond is about 100 gallons. It's in a very poorly lit area, the turtles have no basking lights (not even a heat light). My pictures look bright because I edited them in Photoshop. There is minimal filtration in the pond, and the water is very murky brown, and I couldn't tell if there was a heater.
There were at least 2 large females in the pond. I could see one had pink skin, even through the brown water. It looked like another had two big spots of bone exposed on her head. One of the basking turtles looked super skinny and very weak. All of the turtles that were in the pond were swimming very slowly. They didn't seem strong enough to catch the goldfish that were also in the pond.
I took pictures with a cruddy cellphone, but I intend to go back with a better camera and (discreetly!) take better pictures.
My fiance isn't totally an animal lover, but this made him very mad. He said that as a business, they should be responsible for caring for their animals that are on display.
This is most of the pond. There was a tiny extra area off to the left of the photo. You can tell it's very shallow:
Female with (I think?) bone exposed on head:
This little guy looked too weak to move
I'm not asking anyone to adopt an RES, and everyone's tanks are probably full already! But any advice on what to do about this would be great!! I really do think this business should get in trouble and be prohibited from keeping live animals on display. Even if the sick turtles end up being euthanized, I want something to be done about this. I contacted a reptile rescue in VA to see if they had any suggestions. Anyone that keeps an animal in public should provide at least a somewhat ok example of care.
Well thanks for reading