The Turtle Habitat

Hello Friends.

I got my turtles three days ago but had the setup done way before they arrived. I was initially going to keep them in a 20gallon long but found a great deal on craigslist for a 40 gallon truvu (acrylic) tank and it came with a filter (which I do not use), large pieces of either bog wood or some other type of heavy sinking wood, and other floating drift woods. So I think I will turn my 20 gallon tank into a sump. I will make another post on how I will make that tank into a sump and my experience with making my pvc over-flow. It'll be like a DIY post.

I ordered my Three striped mud turtles 4 days ago from a breeder I found on Kingsnake.com. Link will be provided at the end of this post. I requested one female and one male. I wanted at least one to be very dark with bright stripes. The very same day I paid for my turtles, the breeder shipped out my turtles and I got them the very next day. I was pretty excited and woke up immediately to un-box them. I couldn't figure out which one was male and which one was female and at this age and size you really cant be sure but I think I have a general idea. The larger one is a male and the smaller one a female. Some may tell me that the male is supposed to be smaller but they are not full grown yet so the female will probably out grow him in the future. But as for now, the male is a quarter of an inch larger than the female. The female is 2 inches and the male is 2 1/4 inches. (male pictured above and below)

The female is BEAUTIFUL. She is the dark tangerine that I asked for. The male is much lighter and has more brown on his shell. Both look healthy though and I guess that's all that matters. At first they were very shy. Especially since I kept taking them out of the tank to check their genders. But after 3 days, I can proudly say they have warmed up to me a lot and now are not afraid to eat in front of me or take fresh minnows out of my tongs. They sure are forgiving! I am not sure of their age, which is saddening but a instagram from of mine has a baurii and he is 9 months old and 3/4 of an inch larger than my turtles. So I am guessing they are around 6 months old (could be less). But I will assume they are 6 months old.

In their 40 gallon tank, I have 5 cory catfishes (which I will be adding more in the future) and a bunch of minnows. I take a fish net and scoop two and feed each turtle one by hand every other day (so far i've done this twice). So far they are liking this. The turtles are too slow to catch the fishes on their own, which may be a good thing! Because then I can add much prettier fishes without worrying about them getting eaten off one by one. haha. I didnt buy commercial turtle food for the turtles though because all turtle foods float and mud turtles like to scavenge on the bottom for their food so I bought them bottom feeder fish pellets and will incorporate fish, scallop, and other seafood into their diet. I only see the turtles come up to the surface for air. Sometimes they will sit on the wood and "shallow-water-bask" but most of the time they are near the bottom of the tank. So I need to find food that will sink so they can eat comfortably. I know that mud turtles are poor swimmers so I want to make sure they live as naturally as possible.
I will be working on the PVC Over-flow part of my new filter tomorrow so I will post a DIY on how to make that tomorrow.
Breeder Link: http://market.kingsnake.com/detail.php?cat=131&de=982859