General Care Discussion :: help needed for new turtle

[flyjawn]

so i just picked up a one year old RES from a friend of a friend. she said "it comes with everything you need."

it's VERY CLEAR that this turtle has not been looked after. his water was black. it's an acrylic 15G tank and i can see that it's only ever been 1/4 filled with water. it comes with one of those basking stones that is only 5 or 6 inches tall so you can't fill any more water in the tank.

there is no heater, only one lamp with a regular bulb in it. the filter is a reptofilter.

HELP! for the immediate future what do i need?

tomorrow morning i'm going to get a new basking platform so i can raise the water level, i know i need to fix the lighting - i'm a little confused though. i'm going to have to do some more reading.

is there anything else? will this filter do for the time being until i upgrade the tank?

oh yeah and when i went to pick up the turtle - it was sitting in her minivan. it's the middle of winter here! poor turtle was in his tank the whole drive too.

i feel so sad, i don't know what else i should be doing right now.

i'll take pictures of him tomorrow so maybe you guys can take a look and tell me what you think. poor little guy.

oh yeah and there's a pleco in the tank too.

[steve]

I'd get a Rubbermaid container (you can find them at 40 gallons and up), plus a fully submersible water heater.

How big is the turtle? Male or female? It's sex and size will determine what size tank it will need, so that will affect what heater, filter and basking area you will need to get.

[flyjawn]

i haven't tried to figure out it's sex but it's about 3.5 inches long. after giving the tank a good scrub i was able to build a temporary basking platform that was a bit higher up so now the turtler has at least half the tank to swim in. i also got rid of all the rock formations that were taking up tons of space.

it will have to do for the time being and tomorrow i'll get a lot of stuff sorted out.