Our two turtles are Miss Molly and Peggy Sue. Miss Molly is a Yellow-Bellied Slider and Peggy Sue is a Red-Eared Slider. We adopted them after they were surrendered to the pet store Tabitha used to manage. Even though they were small at the time, the store had no room to keep them so we took them.
Tank Buddies
Although turtles shouldn’t be housed together because they will fight, we’re keeping the girls housed together for as long as they get along. We’ve had them since 2016 and they’ve shown no signs of aggression towards each other and they’ve never snapped at us.
Housing
We used to keep the girls in a tank but we quickly discovered how messy turtles are. When they were in the tank we were constantly carrying heavy buckets of water to do water changes. It was hard on our backs and we knew we had to come up with a better solution.
So, we moved them into a bathtub! We have a four-bathroom house and we only regularly use three of the bathrooms. The fourth one in the guest bedroom doesn’t get used so it was the perfect solution for the turtles. Having them in the bathtub was a game-changer. When we cleaned the turtle tub every week, we just drained the water, scrubbed the tub, and refilled it. It was quick and easy to keep clean and the turtles loved sitting under the faucet when we refilled the tub.
When a relative moved in with us, we had to move the turtles out. They now live in an 80-gallon stock tank in the basement. It’s definitely not as easy to clean as the bathtub was. We’re carrying heavy buckets of water across the basement to do water changes. Even though it’s less convenient, now that our relative has moved out, I don’t think we’ll move them back into the bathtub. The turtles seem happy in the basement where the air temperature is steady and the rats like watching them swim around.
The turtles have a dry basking area made out of garden stones, rock ledges to hide under, and plenty of room to swim.
Heat and UVB
The turtles have a heat lamp and a UVB lamp that are secured above their dry basking area.
Food
We feed the turtles a floating turtle food and fresh leafy green vegetables. As a treat, they get freeze-dried shrimp, freeze-dried mealworms, and freeze-dried crickets.
