Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Initially I thought they were yellow bellied sliders, BUT they *do not have the distint yellow patch* like all the pictures of yellow bellies I have seen. For now, that's what I've been calling them though as it seems to fit the closest.

Someone else suggested Florida cooters - thoughts on this? Those get huge! I hope that's not what they are.

I live in central Indiana. I acquired them last summer from a customer in a petstore who was looking to rehome them. She got them as hatchings at a flea market - I don't know if it was local or where they originated from prior to that. They were yearlings at the time and had been living in a 10g tank. They now live in my 55g tank and are happy as can be, or at least seem to be. They're also growing like weeds. I can upgrade as needed, but would like some idea of what size they'll max out at. My understanding of the sliders is they could hit a foot or so.

Thanks in advance!

The belly coloration

Top of shell. You can see it's ridged from about midway on back.

I can take more pics of their facial markings (or anything else) if necessary for proper ID, but these are the ones I currently have uploaded.
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1.0.0 Thoroughbred
1.0.0 Mali Uromastyx
0.1.0 Bearded Dragon
0.1.0 Crested Gecko
1.2.0 German Shepherds
1.2.0 Cats
0.1.1 Birds (Cockatiel and Conure)
1.1.0 Rabbits
0.0.2 Yellow bellied sliders
3 Fish tanks (SW and FW)

Sorry 2 burst u'r bubble, but that is a cooter, yellow bellied sliders resemble RES but have different markings. The only things i can narrow down from the pics are between a peninsula cooter or a florida cooter, they look pretty much alike (to me, of course. I'm more of a RES & skinks person myself)
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My "babies" :
1.0.0 Indo BTS (Tiliqua gigas gigas)
0.0.1 Rainbow skinks (Mabuya multifasciata)
1.0.2 RES (Trachemys scripta elegans)
0.0.3 Amboina box turtles (Cuora amboinensis)
1.0.0 Chinese softshell (Trionyx sinensis)
1.0.0 Asian leaf turtle (Cyclemys dentata)
1.0.0 Leopard gecko (Eublepharis macularius)
And still growing...

and the shell of the pen. cooter is 16 inches (I can manage that somehow or another), but the shell of the adults pictured doesn't look anything like my two. It looked really round and smooth. Mine have a rough shell. Maybe it changes though as they age? The cooter I saw listed once got something like 30 - 36 inches. Either that was a totally different species or it was really inaccurate.

The florida cooter looked a bit more like them and maxes out at 8 - 12 inches (male and female respectively), so that would be even better. Maybe it's just "wishful looking" on my part though!

What size enclosure would each species need, fully grown? I do plan to move to Florida in a little over a year, but will almost for sure be living in an apartment at least for a few years, so an outdoor enclosure (IE: pond) would be out of the question. I could build something pretty good sized indoors assuming I can nap a first floor apt. so it would be strong enough to hold the volume of water. As I said before, upgrading is not an issue. I really like the little squirts. I've grown rather attached to them. When I first got them, they'd get startled easily and dash off. Now you can't walk in the room without being spotted and having two turtles begging for food (which they do not get just for the heck of it LOL).
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1.0.0 Thoroughbred
1.0.0 Mali Uromastyx
0.1.0 Bearded Dragon
0.1.0 Crested Gecko
1.2.0 German Shepherds
1.2.0 Cats
0.1.1 Birds (Cockatiel and Conure)
1.1.0 Rabbits
0.0.2 Yellow bellied sliders
3 Fish tanks (SW and FW)

.

Those guys are Florida Redbelly's.
Here is a link to Austin's Turtle page giving you more in depth information on the captive care of this species.

http://www.austinsturtlepage.com/Care/cs-flredbelly.htm