A few months back, we were given some painted turtles. Apparently someone bought them and their young kids didn’t pay any attention to them at all, so they decided to get rid of them. With the turtles came the whole setup to make them a home for several years, including a filter and a large aquarium. The filter alone is worth about $92, so for the incredibly low price of free, we could not turn down the offer. (The cynical side of me thinks it’s equally likely that alternatively, they bought turtles, heard something about the over-hyped salmonella fears, and decided to get rid of them tout-de-suite.)
The day we brought them home, the kids chose names for their turtles. We hadn’t observed them at all, so knew nothing about their personalities – heck, we didn’t even know they really HAD personalities because our turtle knowledge was very rudimentary. We put them in a small fish tank with no filter and left them there until we could find something strong enough to support the large tank (even half full, a 33 gallon fish tank with only water in it will weigh in excess of 65kg/140lbs).
My daughter chose the larger of the two (it was about the size of a Canadian $2 coin – henceforth referred to as a Toonie†) and named her†† “Bubbles”. My son couldn’t decide on a name at first, but finally settled on “Splash E.” – not sure what the E is short for in his head.
A few days ago, we found (more like “reinforced with 2x4s”) something suitably sturdy to hold the tank, and I set about configuring Turtopia. I put in the large filter we received as part of the initial setup, and a small air pump and a shell-shaped air stone. I built them a land area of stones to bask under the lights and a sloping underwater bottom for them to explore and dig around in.
Now the air stone gurgles away all day long, and most of the day Bubbles the turtle will hover over it, bobbing to the surface and diving to the bottom over and over grabbing bubbles in her mouth. The other turtle mostly ignores it – 95% of the time, it’s Bubbles in the bubbles.
The tank is mostly silent. The filters are very quiet, turtles don’t make any vocal sounds, and other than the aforementioned air pump producing bubbles, you’d hear more noise in a tomb. Except when, periodically, one of the turtles starts thrashing around while swimming or diving off the rocks that make up their “shoreline”. The turtle the makes all the ruckus splashing about? Splash E.
I’ve been considering putting the kids in for James Randi’s One Million Dollar Paranormal Challenge, but I guess that’s only open to “celebrities” now.
†How the hell we got to spelling it “Toonie” I have no idea; the LOONIE or one dollar coin has a loon on it… the $2 coin looks absolutely nothing like it, and has no loon, and really should be spelled “Twonie” or something like that but I suppose that would lead to people pronouncing it twahn-ee or something because we’re kind of collectively stupid that way.
††We have no idea if they are boys or girls because they are too young to know, so we just call the girl’s turtle “her” and the boy’s turtle “him”.
