Red eared slider?

Question

So i just bought a little red eared slider about 2 inches long, and we had one of those little tanks that came along with it, as well as those little tiny food pellets.

is there anything else it needs as of now? I am going to be buying a bigger tank and such as it gets older, but for now, i can only keep it in the little tank it came in.

Would love to get a few tips.

Answer 1

Here's some tips on tanks for turtles:

For the smallest turtles, start with at least a 30-50 gallon (113-189 liter) glass aquarium (see Water before you rush out and buy that 30 gallon aquarium you saw on sale!) . If you are not interested in actually being able to watch your turtle swimming around under water, you can use a suitably large opaque plastic container such as a large plastic storage box bottom, concrete mixing bin or deep kitty litter pan. You can use clean aquarium rock and gravel to build a slope up from the wet end (the pool) to the dry end (the land). You can silicone together pieces of Plexiglas to make a moveable platform onto which your turtle can crawl onto to rest. Floating or anchored cork rafts or logs are another alternative. Rough rocks must not be used as they can scratch turtle shells which allows bacterial and fungal infections to get started and penetrate into the turtle's body. The water must be at least 1.5 to 2 times your turtle's total length (called carapace length, or CL) in depth, with several extra inches of air space between the surface of the water to the top edge of the tank to prevent escapes. The tank length needs to be at least 4-5 times the CL, and the front-to-back width should be at least 2-3 times the CL. So, for a turtle who is 4" CL, your enclosure water area must be at minimum 6-8 inches (15-20 cm) deep, 16-20 inches (40-51 cm) in length, and 8-12 inches (20-31 cm) in width. As you can see, if you are going to have a land area at one end as well as sufficient water area, you need something much larger than a 10-20 gallon (38-76 liter) tank.

Answer 2

Tip one, as it grows keep your fingers and hands away from its mouth!! We had a red eared slider come walking up the driveway and into the front door. We decided to adopt it (it was pretty big) and found that it needed the following:

Heat lamp
Filter to keep the water clean and moving
25 gallon fish tank
Rocks to climb on so it could get out of the water and dry out under the heatlamp

$150 dollars later we found it was so mean that it almost bit off a friends finger.. twice!! The first itme was the turtles fault, the second time just meant my friend was an idiot and could not be trained.

Hopefully you will have better luck raising it from a baby. Make sure it gets sun and heat though.

We finally gave it to a turtle sanctuary where it moved in with a bunch of other turtle (and liked it).

Answer 3

Well first off, while it lives in that little tank be sure to change the water every couple of days. It needs a place that it can get completely out of the water everyday. I got one of these turtles and I put him in a fish tank with a small filter. it is much easier than cleaning the tank all the time. They make turtle food for when it gets bigger and you can feed him different things when it gets older. Hope this helps!