Hello, Ladies & Gentlemen:
I am new to this forum, as my wife rescued a RES from a busy highway two days ago. We know nothing about turtles. I did not measure it with a tape, but my guess is that the shell is about 8-10" long. Not knowing what else to do, we put the turtle in our fish pond; it seems to be doing fine, hanging around a floating island.
The pond is 2000 gallons, designed to be a koi pond but is stocked with a half-dozen bluegill. It is fed by a stream/waterfalls and the water is circulated through a bead filter 24/7. The pond is about 3.5 feet deep and 5 years old. It has a covered bottom drain, fish-safe skimmer, and side jets. There is some moneywort trailing from the pond edges into the water. We do not have string algae. My immediate question is: what should we do next? We feed the fish koi pellets daily but I can't tell whether the turtle is eating any of those, and it doesn't seem to be eating the moneywort.
A long-term question is whether the turtle will be able to winter over. We live in the upper Sierra Nevada foothills. Some winters we get a few inches of snow; others, a few feet. The pond does ice over, say 6" of ice or so in really cold weather or snowstorms, and I use a stock tank de-icer to melt a hole so gasses can escape. The bluegill winter over just fine--they go into dormancy, but begin to get active every March, and we've not had a winter kill. The low air temperatures in winter are typically in the mid-twenties, but can dip into the single digits. This is a liner pond by the way. Any suggestions on what to do for the winter? Leave the turtle in the pond? Try to find another home? We have become fond of the critter and our bias is to keep it if we can do so without endangering it.
Thanks in advance, everyone.
Joel
