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I have a baby RES he's one inch and it's hard to find any information on how to create their habitat. I bought the red ear slider book from a reptile store but it has little information on the hatchlings. I read online that they could drown this young so I was afraid to put Squirt in deep water. I have Squirt in a 20 gallon tank with two ponds. One is 3 x 6 inches and about 1.5 inches deep the other is where I'm feeding Squirt it's 2 x 4 inches and about 2 inches deep. I'm afraid I'm harming Squirt by not filling the tank with water and just letting her/him go for it. Thanks for any advice.

RES love deep water, fill it up all the way, just becareful not to give them an easy escape when filling up the water and provide floating plastic plants for them to rest on.

And what do you mean "a 20 gallon tank with two pond's?" the setup should be mainly water with a basking area.

Hmm..I highly suggest that you read ALL of the information here: www.redearslider.com this site and forum specializes in RES, so if anyone knows RES, it's us!

Welcome to forum!

-eddie

Like I said it's a hatchling...illegal to sale so no one's been able to give me any info on raising it because they lack experience as I do...apparently I should treat him no different than a four inch RES...thanks.

But like Eddie said, make sure to put some floating plastic plants or some other decoration that comes up to just under the water surface so the baby turtle can rest on it and still be in the water. RES are excellent swimmers by nature and thrive in the water. But they also like to have an area in the water that they can rest on but easily raise their head out of the water to breathe when they get tired.

Welcome to the forum too! Congrats on your new hatchling and post some pictures if you get a chance.

Since your turtle is very young and un-used to deep water, add the water to the tank about an inch at a time. Next day, add another inch. This will allow him to transitiion to it without stress.

And what David said, it's important that they have a place to rest where they can stick their heads out of the water and breath. A plastic plant that reaches to the surface is perfect for this.

The little tiny ones also like to have a place to hide. They can hide in the plastic plant, and I've seen some people put a coffee cup in the tank, turned on it's side, for the turtle to hide in. It's real cute!

As you fill the tank with water, you'll need to provide a basking platform so they can come out of the water onto a dry surface to bask. It's essential for their health that they do this. There's a lot of info on basking in the link Eddie provided above.

Question: Are you sure the tank you have is designed to hold water? Some tanks are for land based reptiles like lizards. They are called terrariums and will break if you try to fill them with water. The kind of tank you need for an aquatic turtle is a fish tank that's designed to hold water.

I've got a 20 gallon aquarium...good for holding water. I just filled it five inches but I have about an inch worth of rock on the bottom. I put the baby in the tank and he went into the water from the basking bridge, couldn't feel the bottom with his feet, freaked out and got back onto the bridge. But he's brave he kept going out a little further and coming back for about a minute before finally exploring the tank. I have a piece of curved wood in there that he climbed on and floated around looking at everything. It was hilarious because he's so small but he floated around with his little head as high as he could put it. What a personality!

We just got back from the vet, he's got pneumonia and I have to give him shots for the next two weeks but the vet thinks he's going to be fine cause we caught it early . I took the vet pictures of his habitat and he thought it was a good setup. Thanks for the help. My turtle is very happy and so am I.

If the rocks are 'fish gravel' or rocks smaller than his head, then take it out asap. turtles have been known to eat the gravel resulting in impaction, and death..Bare bottom tanks are better and cleaner, but if you wish to have rocks, go with river rocks BIGGER than your turtles head.

So many turtles have died because of gravel and in case you have gravel, I dont want your turtle to die from it. In this forum there has not been alot of cases where a turtle has ingested a large amount of gravel and survived. one of the most recent deaths was from someone who tried everything they could, spent hundreds, and sadly failed

aw man, pneumonia sucks, but when its treated early, treatment for it has a high success rate

Pictures of your setup would be cool

I'll echo what Eddie just said about the gravel. It's very dangerous for turtles. I don't know why the pet stores keep selling it for turtles - I guess they don't know any better. And like Eddie said, you can put some rocks in there but they need to be large like river rocks.

It's much easier to keep clean if there aren't too many rocks. Turtles like to play with them and they add interest, so a dozen or so would be nice.

I was at Petco the other day and they had bags of small gravel that were labeled "Turtle Gravel"! There are companys out there marketing this stuff as being good for aquatic turtles!

That's incredible!!! That's just going to far! I'm going to write a letter to Petco. If they leave that stuff out there then they are responsible for the consequences. I don't suppose you got the name of the product?

No I was in a hurry picking up cat food cause my wife was waiting in the car. I'll take a better look next time I'm in there and I'll probably talk to the manager about it too. Don't know if they'll listen but at least they can't claim ignorance.

I bought the same rock that is in the Petco RES habitat where their turtles live until they find a home. I went through the bag and threw all the small rocks out. They're the smooth oval shaped brownish colored rocks that crack and break so I threw out the cracked sharp looking rocks. I am getting rid of it next month. I went to Lowe's today and bought a huge piece of flagstone for $6 and I'll buy another piece to make up the height for the rock cause I really don't want to clean the rock again. It's too time consuming.

I'll put up pictures.

I guess that's Squirt in your avatar? he's precious! So tiny!

That's my Squirt!

He's really cute!