Turtle World

Life in the microcosm known as our fish tank continues to develop! Toodeloo, our Red Eared Slider turtle, is noticeably growing. She has also become quite accustomed to us and will swim to the front of the tank when we open the hatch. She knows who feeds her, that's for sure! She is great at making eye contact, even, and will smile up at us as we drop the food in.
The tank does get dirty rather quickly, so we have to keep up with cleaning it regularly. We've also had a problem with algae springing up in the past few days, so Russell gave the tank a good cleaning. Sadly, when he was relocating the fish to a temporary home in a vase, one of the tiny neon tetras chose a bad time to bail on the net and got crushed. We were bummed about that, especially because his little buddy seemed very forlorn without his twin companion.
This clearly occasioned a trip to the pet store, where we picked up two more tetras and a Plecostomus, an algae-eating fish. We now have three blue and red neons, two orange neons, a silver tetra (by far the biggest and fattest fish of the bunch - he even eats the turtle food!) and Toodeloo.
We're aware of the fact that Toodeloo may at some point decide that the fish we got to keep her company are better used as snacks, but at the moment she's too little to catch them. Hopefully that will continue for a while, because turtles are actually quite social animals and I don't want her to get lonely in there. If it were legal to sell turtles as pets in NC, I'd pick up another baby to keep her company, but so far I haven't seen any other baby turtles in need of a home.
Some years ago I actually bought two Red Eared Sliders for a friend who had always wanted pet turtles. I knew she'd been looking for them and was frustrated by the NC ban on turtles. Florida, however, had no such law at the time and I was surprised to find a kiosk in the middle of the mall full of super-cute quarter-sized baby turtles. I called her, confirmed her turtle desires were still in tact, and bought two. They lived in a tiny plastic tank in a Victoria's Secret bag from St. Petersburg back to Chatham County, in and out of hotels and fast food joints the whole long road trip home. I gave them exercise on an upturned frisbee in the car... Hilarious. The last time I saw them, they were both huge and doing well. I hope that Toodeloo grows up big and stays with us for a while. They can live to be around 40 years old, so she could be part of Orion's life for a while.
In order to give her better shell-health, we got a better full-spectrum bulb for the tank, which she seems to enjoy. She hangs out on the 'basking shell' we built for her a good part of the day, and is no longer so shy that she slides into the water if we get close. She likes to do a funny move where she stretches all her limbs out away from the shell, so that her shell is balanced on the high ground and everything gets plenty of 'sun'. We call it 'turtle yoga'!
I still find having the tank in the house very relaxing. The stream of the filter supplies some nice water white noise, which I enjoy when I'm dozing during mid-day naps with Orion. It's also very soothing to sit and watch the fish - Russell even likes to hold Orion up to look at the tank. He does look, but at this point I think it's mostly just the color and light that attracts him. Regardless, I think we all benefit from our little underwater world.