Hi everyone - I'm a turtle newbee! Tons of good information on this site - thanks so much.
So ... my stepdaughter was fostering a RES for 2 years - she's moving to London in March and cannot take the turtle with her - so her Dad (my hubby) and I agreed to adopt the little RES and keep it in my stepson's room, as long as my stepson committed to taking care of him! Well ... as luck would have it ... I like the little turtle an awful lot ...
The turtle (renamed "Ryan", although I believe she's a girl) - was pretty much ignored for those initial 2 years, but she's healthy and happy! We received minimal care instructions, but did get a new 40gln tank, an 55gln insert filter, some floating food pellets, and a plastic rock that Ryan climbs. Ryan never had a basking area! So today I went out & bought Ryan a better basking platform, a 75W bulb, and a fake fern. He's already stretched out under the "sun"! We were told to keep the water at about 4" high - that the tank isn't made to be filled all the way. But based on the tank pictures on this site, 4" is pretty low! Ryan does a good job of swimming around though.
The tank base is a black substrate with florescent specks, but after reading here it seems river rocks might be best. It's only been 1.5 weeks and the water is SOOO murky - I suspect the substrate is a contributor. Do you think a canister filter would help? I really can't see us doing an entire tank cleaning once a week - based on the info here it seems more like 1-2x's/month if we do smart maintenance in between.
I'll do a full tank cleaning this weekend, then post pics of Ryan. I'd really appreciate feedback and advice. Thanks so much!