Sadly, after 4 years, our turtle Iris passed away. She was sick when we got her (from the pet store) and we nursed her back to health the first 2 months (even gave her shots in the armpit to get rid of a respiratory infection!). She also never grew in those 4 years, so who knows how old she was… But she went peacefully, sleeping in the bottom of the tank.
After a short mourning period, the empty aquarium started to feel weird, so we ordered a new turtle, Juno! She's a 2-year old Eastern Painted Turtle that we got from turtlesource [not reputable].com.
We've read up as much as we can about the painted turtles, and they seem pretty similar to RESs, but we've got a couple questions regardless:
She hasn't done any basking out of the tank. As you can see from the pics, I've put some significant time into building a custom basking platform (bent acrylic covered in terrarium carpet). About as close as she gets is sticking her face out of the water and hanging out on the platform.
Any way to entice her to bask? It's been a couple weeks now … our old RES would have been nutso over a platform like that and been up there for hours. I've also heard some turtles will only partially bask or bask in the water. Can anyone with a painted back that up? I figure we'll just give her enough time and it will work itself out, she's still occasionally skiddish, esp. if she's close to being out of the water.
I hope I helped a little, 
