My name is Simon and I am the proud owner of four RES, all of which being recent additions to my family. I had one for most my life but died just before I had to leave for University (was roughly 17 years old at the time, as I got it from my cousin as a gift when I was 10) so I am familiar with the amount of work they take.
I have a son who is about to turn 2 and me and my wife thought that getting pets would be good thing for him, and as we live in an apartment and unconfined bet was a violation so with experience with turtles we went out and got two from the local pet store - nearly identical in patterns and have since been always within inches of each other. We named them Shelly and Shecky after two stuffed turtles that my son got for his birthday. Than for christmas we got our third from a friend who misunderstood our explanation of the tank - this one being Squirt; the smallest and by far the most active (only one to date who attempted to climb to the top of our driftwood decoration). Lastly came Atlas (named because of how large she is compared to the other three), this one came as a rescue, we were out and happened to cross a young man who was attempting to release her into a park near our house (being from Canada this was a very bad idea on his part). I offered to take her and brought her home (after a quick visit to a vet friend of mine), timid and shy she has spent most of her time hiding, but I believe thats just a new environment jitters as her apetite appears to be healthy.
Thats the rough outline of my story regarding the turtles in it, and I am happy to be here to get what pointers I can pick up (be it care for multiple RES or tank ideas <- knowing full well I will need to get at the very least another 150 gallon tank in a year or two))
