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Hi there! I'm from Ohio and am the proud owner of a 14 year old RES, Raphie, who was rescued in the summer of 2002 from a vendor who was illegally selling small plastic cages with "free" turtles in the mall I worked at. When the police busted the man with the cart they found over 200 hatchling RES's inside, half of which were dead, most of the rest of them were sick. At the time I had previous experience with other reptiles, so I helped a local animal rescue find homes for most of the little guys, and the last two sick ones I brought home to try to nurse back to health. Unfortunately, Mikey died 2 days later due to a severe respiratory infection, but I managed to nurse Raphie back to health, and 14 years later she is a spoiled happy piggy! Two weeks ago, I also adopted what turned out to be a YBS from an owner who had had her for 6 years in very substandard conditions and had no idea what kind of turtle she was. Poor girl didn't even have a name, so I call her Lucia (Lucy for short). I'm in the process of teaching her how to swim as she had been kept in a 20 gal. tank with roughly 3" of water for most of her life. I was going to post some pics, but I wasn't sure if they were allowed in the intro. thread I've been lurking around this forum for a couple months now, and figured it was time to say hello! I look forward to chatting with all of you!

Welcome to the site! Looking forward to hearing and seeing more about Raphie and Lucia. SHe should take up swimming quickly, maybe offer a couple of spots where she can rest and float. Feel free to post pics wherever you feel comfortable.

First off, I apologize for the quality of the images, my camera isn't the greatest, and sometimes my punks don't like to hold still! Also, all of these pics are about a week or two old, I have done some upgrades to Raphie's tank since these were taken.

Anyway, here is Raphie:




Raphie's set up:


We had just finished moving, so the tank was pretty bare while I waited for my new plants to arrive. The area under the dock serves as an underwater garden and fish hiding spot, since Raph can't get to it. It is now fully stocked with water plants, fish, and shrimp.

Now on to Lucia, these are the pics from her previous owner that were posted on her listing:






These are pics of Lucy the day I brought her home. I didn't have much time to make her tank fancy, as the rescue happened kinda quickly. Also, I had to drain out most of the water that I initially had in the tank so she wouldn't drown:










Lucy has a dry dock now and we've gotten her water level up to 1' without her panicking!! Also, I'm not sure if you can see it or not, but she had some bad redness around the edges of her skin which have now cleared up. I'm not sure what happened to her tail, I noticed when I brought her home that the end was black and tip seems to be missing. Of course I got no explanation from the previous owner. I think it is some kind of old injury, and I've been keeping an eye on it. So there are my girls, enjoy!!

Raphie's looking good. Is there room for to get under her basking area? Has the injury to Lucy's tail healed? She looks happy

There was originally space for Raph to get under the basking area, but she kept lifting the whole thing up and dropping it against the bottom of the tank and she had also damaged one of her scutes on her back doing this so I thought it would be for the best to close it off for now. Raphie originally had a large stump in the water with her that she could push around, so I think that is what her endgame was there. I felt bad getting rid of her stump as she loved moving it around for the past 5 years, but it was starting to get icky, so it had to go.

As for Lucy's tail, it seems to have been healed already, there hasn't been any fresh blood and it doesn't seem to bother her at all. She seems to be getting more active by the day now that she has ample swimming area, good lighting, good filtration and a much better diet. It was touch and go for the first week trying to get her to eat her veggies and not beg for pellets, but she's been going to town on them the past few days. The previous owner had been feeding her Reptomin 3 times a day and going through a 5oz. can each week, so I think the adjustment was a bit of a shock to her but she seems to be doing good now. I think now that I have her in a decent amount of water, I'm going to give her a treat of some minnows this week.

It was rather funny the first day I had her in the deeper water with the dock in, she kept trying to swim up through the dock. Then she ignored it for a few hours and was clinging to the cord on the water thermometer. I purposefully rose the water level a bit so that the platform was a little covered with water, since she has never had the opportunity to bask before. I was so excited after dinner when I went in and saw her hanging out on top of the dock!

I keep a bare tank too, so I too have some regret about the emptiness as well. I"m using PVC as well, but it's in the center of the tank so my RES can go through. Glad to hear about her basking and swimming... always happy to see turtles do that.

I'd also be wary about that water thermometer. Those water probe ones are very unreliable.

Sorry, I have been very busy over the last few days and trying to catch up on the forums. Welcome to the forums here and thank you for the photos. I personally thank you for your involvement in part of that large scale turtle rescue. She looks very happy overall in her tank as well. She has came a very long way and is a big girl today thanks to all your effort and time that you put into her.

Hello, welcome to the forums!