General Care Discussion :: Help! Missing turtle.

[unclejoe]

Haha Apparently he liked his freedom already trying to get out again. Good thing he didn't teach the other one how to do it. I for one would love to see a picture of this mastermind of egg crates, since we have been talking about him for over 24 hrs if you can swing it.

[Bluekachu]

DSCN49g89.JPG (195.08 KiB) Viewed 4802 times

That's the bratty-brat in question. It was from before everything was ready and they were in the new tank.

[unclejoe]

Awww what a beautiful Mastermind he is. Only other male RES I have seen was Melanistic. Mango has gorgeous coloring..

[Bluekachu]

Thank you! Both he and I appreciate the compliment.

I think he's male but I'm not 100% sure. He has a sibling who is separated because they don't play well with others who looks extremely similar to him; and of course there's the little painted who is my icon. That's his tank mate.

[unclejoe]

From the length of is his front claws in that picture you are right he is a male.
Our little painted appears to be a midland from all the research we have done on his markings and such. We look forward to seeing how he develops. We did not have any painted turtles in our Florida Pond so he is a new experience. So is dealing with a baby over adults..lol

[Bluekachu]

Painter is seriously the most domesticated of my turtles. It's to a pretty impressive degree.

[unclejoe]

that is good to hear.. We researched a lot before adopting Phil.. And the RES the Painteds and the florida red bellies came highly recommended for beginners and that they had pretty good temperaments. I know from experience that the Red Bellied wild female was fantastic. Very tame and loved to be scratched. But she was huge. Then we got attached to a young female RES we named Ambie (Amber) and she got to very tame as well.. Finally decided on a painted because they were the smallest out of the three breeds. I really wanted a southern painted. But Philbert came on CL and it isn't easy getting turtles in our area. So we went for it. So far we are very happy with him. He isn't shy, he eats from our hands, he will swim on my hand if I put it in the tank and he even allows me to put my hand near him on his basking rock. Doesn't even flinch. As long as I don't try to touch him there.. But if I wanna put a piece of food on his rock he is A ok with that..lol Not bad for a turtle we haven't even had a month yet. Can't wait to see how he progresses. We know from spending time with the wild turtles that they grew year after year.. Surprising us with their smarts and their ability to trust. Wish we could have taken them all with us. But where we live now, hard to find water at all, let alone ponds..

[Bluekachu]

That is WAY more tame then any of mine, but I was also told not to touch or poke at them for years. I honestly can't say I did any research before I got mine, it was all after the fact because the RES were both surprise handed to me and we found Painter outside.

[unclejoe]

Well we figured if wild turtles in the pond enjoyed some touching why wouldn't a turtle in captivity? Took about 3 yrs for the wild turtles to trust us enough for a back scratch or a throat scratch,, but at least half of the 14 we fed learned to like it... We don't poke at him we allow him to come to us. Same with hand feedings he has to come to basking rock to get fed. He is starting to learn to crawl on there and look at us at feeding time, which is what we were hoping for.. That way hopefully he don't think anytime he sees a finger its food..lol

We really started researching cause we weren't sure we wanted to bite the bullet of turtles in captivity, we knew it was gonna be way more complicated and more responsibility then sitting at the side of the pond twice a day.. But we have missed them so badly we finally decided to jump in, and I didn't wanna start with a turtle that I knew was gonna get huge like a yellow bellied slider. I guess we were lucky in a sense, we got to see how big these guys get, cause we only interacted with adults accept for a few youngins..