This comes from Austin, TX. I am new to the world of RES and now a new "co-caretaker" of 2 beautiful RES. Owner is our fabulous librarian at the middle school where I volunteer. The RES have been calling home a small aquarium whose pump has recently failed. One is about 6 years old, ~ 3 inches long, the other is 9 years old, ~5 inches long. The RES now call their new home (as of Friday, November 16) a still pond I oversaw the installation of in an outdoor classroom / wildlife habitat outside the school in a semi-fenced in area. Pond was installed last December, is a 6 foot diameter tank, 2 feet tall, sunken about 6-10 inches into the ground, and contains vegetation (aerator plants, hardy lillies, hornwort, anacaris, pickererl weed, eelgrass, iris, umbrella plant and society garlic), a bit of algae, and loads of gambusia. It does not have a filter and the eco-system / eco-cycle seems to keep things fairly tidy. Plus I do a general clean up once a week, and fill it when tank evaporates about 4-6 inches (which in the summer is once a week - when we weren't getting rain.) Tanks is never full to top unless it has rained. That will have to be something we watch for if we continue to keep the turtles in there.
Additions to the pond as of Friday - protective buckets around 2 of the many lillies as I've read RES can be "hard on lillies". A basking area that is a stack of bricks and cinders that were already in the pond, and a log 1/2 propped 1/2 floating. AND of course the 2 RES.
Upon checking on tank Saturday - no RES to be found. (They were placed in there Friday afternoon). It was a warm sunny day (temps are hi 70's low 80's right now in Austin), I spent about 3 hours at school doing volunteer stuff around the grounds, no sightings the whole time. I went back Sunday, and could not seem them anywhere in the water, fretted a bit, and fished around the tank until I found the smaller one. It was kind of suspended toward the bottom of the pond completely tucked up in its shell. As soon as I brought it to surface, it came out of its shell. It seemed completely fine, I placed it in sun on basking area - it scrambled into the water, gone from sight. I went home, fretted some more. Stopped by school on my way to work this morning, went turtle "fishing" again, found the larger one swimming along the bottom. Could not locate smaller one but did not spend a huge amount of time as I didn't want to seem like a threat to them.
Based on what I've read on the forum in this website (and I have been obssessed with reading any and all material I can find about RES) and what I've read on the dozen or so other sites I've visited since Friday, things should be fine... but I can't help but worry about these guys! Are they going to acclimate OK. When should I start worrying about not seeing any basking activity? Do we continue to feed them pellets? Would appreciate any and all constructive feedback! I realize a picture is worth a thousand words... will follow up with one.
As a side note, our plan was to do a "trial run" until the winter break (a week before Christmas) and then decide a game plan for housing for "the winter" - which basically is January thru mid Feb. Our winters here are typically mild.
