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What was your turtle doing when you were seeing him/her for the first time? and how did he/she come home?

When I first saw Roca he was sitting at the top of a 3 layer eastern river cooter pyramid. He was staring defiantly at the other turtles at the other side of the tank as though saying, "Challenge me if you dare, fools!"

I, at the time realized to tell from the healthy turtles from the sick ones, you should choose the ones that were eating. I asked the guy if he could feed him and he said sure. He brought out a big jard of Reptomin and threw some sticks in. There were about 12 turtles in there. Only two went after the pellets.

Roca flew off his mountain and into the water, causing a few other turtles to fall in the water, too. He and another turtle immediatley began gorging themselves. At first I wanted the more timid one but when Roca grabbed a pellet and swam in front of me to eat it, I decided HE was the right one.


He came home with me in a plastic fishie bag with a little bit of water....


I'd love to hear your stories!

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When I first saw him my poor little turtle was sitting in a small plastic disposable container in the kitchen. My husband had brought him inside from the back yard where he had hidden under some leaves. He (Spot, not my husband) was probably trying to hibernate. It was almost Thanksgiving and already cold but he was woefully unprepared to hibernate. He was sort of grey and quite lethargic from the cold. I rushed out and bought an aquatic turtle starter kit from Petco and somehow, he managed to survive. He was a pretty sad looking little turtle for a long time. All his skin peeled off in grey sheets.

Wow! So was he a wild turtle? How big was he when you got him?

He was maybe two inches long. He may have been wild though the nearest water is quite a long distance away (1/2 mile) and is really just a trickle in a ditch. Or he could have been somebody's pet turtle that escaped. We'll never know.

when i went to the pet store i brought my mommy cuz she loves turtles. and this little guy was right at the glass swimming at us, showing his belly and he has such an interesting design. i examined him and his shell and it looked all good so i told the lady"i want that one"

and he ot him out and he started walking all over the place like a silly little thing. and yea, he put him in a fish bag too, i think it was weird.. but then he got home and played in his tank i love him

I had no idea what I was doing when i got my two.(I had been to three other pet stores just trying to got some advice on the care of these turtles) They where all in a "built-in reptile unit," about 10-15 tanks all built into a cabinet type thing, with all different kind of reptiles. I was looking at all of these reptiles in there tiny 10-20 gallon tanks, when I saw one that was half full of water, with probably 20-25 sliders in there.(this was all before going to the other pet stores researching , this was the first time I had ever seen a captive turtle in a fish tank.)

These little guys where going at it!!! They had put a 3-4 inch fish in there, and these little 1 inch RES where tearing it apart!!!! I was just like, , I want one of those!!!! So we went around looking for info, and the best price, got all the supplies(or at least we thought we did, no one in three pet stores told us we needed a UVB bulb!!), went back, and asked for the smallest, most healthy one they had, and the guy said he would get lonely( which RES don't get lonely), so he talked us into another hatchling!! They put them in a fish bag with mostly air, and a little water, and sealed it up!!! I asked if they would suffocate in there, and the guy said,"Not if you open the bag within an hour." Luckily, we only lived 15 minutes from the pet store, I don't think they would have made it an hour!!

It's been a fun ride since then, got a job, found this site, bought a HUGE tank, and I now know that these amazing creatures, are so much more then fish eating monsters!!!

I was visiting a high school friend who went to college in NYC and she wanted me to get a fake designer bag on Canal St. When we got there I was way too cheap to pay $40 for a knock off, saw the turtles, and was like "wow, $10, what a bargain." I chose Leo because she was standing in her 1/4 inch of water looking right up at me and out of the 40 or so plastic containers around her she was just the one I noticed. So $7 later (I haggled ) Leo was mine. In the long run, she's been MUCH more expensive than a knock off coach bag, but I think she's much more my style

Ha ha! Great stories everybody!

I first saw my 3 RES when I went to pick them up from a guy who posted them on craigslist for free. When we got there, they were all hiding at the bottom of a dishpan full of filthy brown water. We couldn't even see them until the guy reached in and pulled them out. I immediately took them to the sink and rinsed them off before i put them in my styrofoam cooler to bring them home. While I was rinsing them in the sink the guy emptied out the dishpan in the toilet and it smelled like a septic tank! Man, i couldn't get out of that place fast enough! And I'm glad I got those poor turtles out of there too. They shed a ton of skin for the first couple of months but now they look great and they are very healthy and active.

Kevin, you and Roca were destined for each other! lol! He's the perfect turtle with a ton of personality and you're the perfect guy to capture it on camera!

My turtle was a christmas present for my little sister. Originally, my twin sister (Jordan) and I went to the store and picked out the turtle (I don't remember how, they may have just picked one out for us--there were about 30 turtles in the tiniest tank ever) and we bought the cage they told us to get and left.
After Jordan decided that she just HAD to keep that turtle for herself, I went back and bought Donatello from the same store.
Jordan's turtle ended up dying after a little while (I don't remember how long) because he never ate and we didn't then what we do now (about how to make him eat) and my neighbor told us that he could get all the nutrients he needed from the food breaking up in the water, but he couldn't get calcium that way. So I guess he either died of softshell or starvation.

The first time Sammi saw him was on Christmas Eve and my mom took her upstairs to give her to her and Sammi, who had already figured out that she was getting the turtle, immediately said "HIS NAME IS FLUFFY!" (She's very subtle and good at keeping the fact that she already knew a secret)
She then lived in an inch of filthy water for the next 2 1/2 years before I took her.

My first turtle. It was my birthday, and my father brought him home in a little plastic tub with a plam tree in the middle. That is where I kept him for a week, until my sisters friend came over with a tank for him. I set him up in this little 10 gal tank. I had no turtle food, and no lights. He was on the window sill with sun shinning on him. In the summer we opened the window. I fed him chopped meat, lettuce, shredded carrotts, and veg. scraps from dinner. Some cooked fish when we had it. There was a big rock in the tank that he basked on. I was 10 years old. I don't think I ever loved anything that much. I ran home from school every day to see him. In the summer I would bring him outside in the yard to sit with me. He was never sick, never had anything wrong with his shell. He lived for many years. When I went on vacation one year, I left him with my cousin, and I don't know what she did, but after that he got sick, and later died. We really didn't know how to care for them in those days.

Sheba was in a beautiful indoor pond with water flowing down the rock wall at the petstore. When I first saw her, she was stuffing a big goldfish into her mouth. When she finished that, she swam right over to me and looked at me. It was love at first sight!

Aww, it's so neat to hear how everyone first met ther turtles

The first time I saw my Rigby, she was actually in a duck's mouth about to be eaten. We were living by a lake at the time, and it was either fall or winter -quite cold outside anyway - and I went down to visit with and feed the ducks as I usually did every morning. When I got there though, they were already busy eating something that looked to big for them to swallow, so I ran up to them and they spit it out and waddled away. I thought it was a plastic toy turtle at first, about the size of a 50 cent piece, until a little turtle head poked out of the shell and looked up at me like "whew...thanks."

The first time I saw Wedge and Apolo, it was 1:00 in the morning in a parking lot, meeting with my sister who had picked them up for me. They were nestled in a shoebox amongst a bunch of shredded newspaper, and I rudely woke them up from a nap to say hi for the first time. They were bigger than Rigby when I first saw her, but still so small and cute that I immediatly melted on the spot! Then I came home and put them in their temporary Rubbermaid home (until I got their tank fully set up), and stayed up for most of the night watching/fretting over the new babies.

Wow that's a neat rescue story about Rigby.

When I first saw Kai he/she was staring at me and swam up against the glass thats when I decided to get him / her .

I was at the store and was observing all the turtles
All the other turtles were scared of me and started swimming to the other side
But Tito was the only one that was begging for food on the glass
So i took him