General Care Discussion :: New to Turtles....Is this ok?

[AshlyRose]

Ok . So here are a few pictures of the guy and his setup. And here are my questions:

1) He wont stay on his dock. I know its important for him to bask so we put him up there and he wont stay for more than 30 seconds. The only time he ever dries out is when we hold him, which he has no issues with. We have the UV bulb in the clamp lamp and one in the top light thing.

2) He wont each much. We give him the hatchling pellets. He eats them occasionally but mostly just spits them back out, rarely does he actually eat them. I have offered him strawberries, apples, carrots, all kinds of things that are supposed to be like "treats" and he doesnt want any of them.

He is in a 45 gallon with about 30 gallons of water in it. We have a submersible heater and a pump. Obviously we have the dock. We have some fake plants right now but we put in some plant bulbs that should be growing within the next couple weeks, when those grow enough we will take out the fake plants. We have a few fish in there as well. He doesnt seem to mind them. They are either too big for him too eat or the small ones are too quick for him. We put a male swordtail with two females, so hopefully they will have babies and Mr. Turtle can feast on those. We also have a Common Plecostomus, Albino Catfish, A Loach, A snail, 3 Ghost Shrimp and a Blue Gourami. For now he seems pretty ok with the fish. He chases them a bit but then gives up. When he gets bigger we will put him in his own 120 gallon tank.

Anyways, so is there anything I am doing wrong? Why wont he eat or bask?

Here he is, that is my hand. You can see the size, he is small.


Here is his dock that he wont go on.


Here is where he prefers to hang out


This is the tank setup

[EmperorTunaFish]

Hello and welcome.

I'm guessing you just stuck the turt in this tank? If so, don't worry about your turt not eating or basking. He/she just needs time to adjust to the new environment. You can try to entice eating by soaking stuff in tuna/salmon water.
The bulb idea is a very very cool idea. Don't be disheartened if your turt to shred up any real plant it sees. It's the reason I use huge plastic plants. :[

The community sounds pretty and diverse. Unfortunately, you'll have to try not to get too attached to the other critters frolicking around in there; chances are they will be turtle food eventually. RES are predators. Your turtle will slowly and painfully pick away at anything bigger than itself.

You're gonna get a lot of people telling you to remove the small rocks from the bottom of the tank. Your turt can swallow one and it can become impacted, or cut up their innards. A good alternate for a substrate is sand. I prefer bare bottom with a few rocks myself, just so the 'mess' doesn't get caught in rocky nooks and whatnot.
More info on gravel woes here: http://www.redearslider.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=12532
More info on sand here: http://www.redearslider.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=17268

Only thing I can think of to add would be some cuttlebone (same stuff a bird uses). It's packed with calcium. Just take that hard backing off it first.

[AshlyRose]

Thanks for the reply!

I am really not attached to the fish. My husband picked them all out and I told him that they might not last too long with the turtle. I actually noticed while looking at the tank a bit ago that the only big slow fish we have has a bite taken out of it. So I took out right away.

Thats why we wanted to grow the real plants, so he could eat at them. Do you know of any water plants that are toxic to RES?

Oh the rocks! I never even thought of that! I will take them out ASAP. Thank you for pointing that out. See, this is why I posted this

[theartbook35]

Wow, your tank is beautiful.

The gravel needs to go bye-bye because turtles apparently eat it. Mine never did, but I think I got really lucky because there are forums on here which show that gravel can hurt a turtle internally.

Anyways, yeah, turtles don't like it if you put them on their dock. It's like a predator fishing them from the water almost. They will go there when they want to.

Your little guy looks under two inches, which is fairly young still. It will mostly be interested in proteins for now, try a lot of romaine or leaf lettuce, tomatoes once a week, and maybe even carrots once a week. New set ups take a little while for a turtle to get used to, and until they get a definite routine of their own, it's actually normal if the refuse food for a while. Refusing food shouldn't go on for too long, no more than a month. If it does go on too long, try different things like turtle jello, there's a recipe in the Feeding and Nutrition section.

Sword plants, water hyacinth, water lillies, and anacharis are all great for aquatic turtles.