How frequently do you have to change the water? I have two baby RESes in a small tank (without filter) and I find that it turns green after 1 day, and smelly after 1.5 days.

New pet. The missus thinks that it's a good way to nurture my paternal instincts

I guess I'll get a tank+filter then. Changing the water's becoming a chore and it'd be good to reduce it.

Is it ok to feed my baby RES a mosquito that I caught?

Aw they didn't eat it.. will look for some other stuff to try to feed them with.

Haha I wanted to use blue danude at first, but Youtube didn't have the version I wanted.

The missus did quite a bit of shopping yesterday. Bought a big rock, tubiflex worm feed, shrimp feed, cuttlefish bone, a !@#!% expensive UV-B lamp, and a filter. Gonna get an aquarium later this week hopefully.

My turtles spine seems to be jutting out.. is this normal?



and

That's a relief, thanks.

I went by the pet shop today and noted that the hatchlings there have it too.

When I bought them they were in this small lil plastic tank..


And I improvized with a plastic container I found somewhere..


Today I finally bought them a aquarium

Hm why's that? Coz they kept getting dissed by others?

I finally fixed the "waterfall sound" that my filter makes by guiding the water to the walls with cling wrap and magnets

What sorts of aquatic plants are available here that I can chuck into the tank for the RES to eat?

Thanks for the advice. I checked East Aqua in Ikano again but couldn't find it. The plants there weren't labeled, and the pistia photos I googled didn't look like the ones on display.

uzairi, do you think the first page should be updated with this local info?

About this temperature gradient, is it necessary to prepare a basking lamp if the tank is put indoors in a Malaysian home without aircond?

I notice that my turtles bask despite not having one.. although I haven't measured how long

Thanks, will keep that in mind. The missus is already going over the stuff I'm getting for the turtles Maybe I'll pop by Ikea to find a clamp-on lamp.

I bought a 4200K full spectrum tube yesterday to replace the aquarium's stock tube, which has a nasty green tinge.

Omgggggg.. this is the first time I'm using the UV lamp. I left the UVB light on for 30 straight hours unattended, and some freaky changes happened to my turtles.

This is what they looked like before.. kinda pale. Never exposed them to unfiltered sunlight before.


Now they're very dark green?! I'm not sure if my eyes are being fooled, but both the missus and I agree that they've gone much darker


And the cuttlefish bone that was floating for a week untouched.. they chewed it until it sank?!?

I just saw one of my turtles do the mating ritual!!! Erm, while the other turtle was trying to heave itself underneath a rock. It's so cute. Guess that confirms his gender to be male right?

Is it a concern if the water turns *slightly* green but otherwise is clear? it looks like someone poured pandan extract into the aquarium.

Does that mean my filter is underpowered? The tank+filter are one week old.

I have a JBL Reptil-Sun 8.0% UVB.

The missus took some photos of our turtles. Thought it's appropriate to share here, since we have all embraced.. the dark side

I'm not sure why they both have effective range quoted at 30", when the 26W bulb should be about double the intensity at any given distance (assuming linear increase in spectrum intensity and point source).. and with the inverse square law.. should yield sqrt(2) longer effective range ~ 42".