TONS of questions, share your wisdom and pics

[mainbutter]

I would honestly rather do turtles, can you tell me anything about that???

They interest me much much more, but I was guessing that they would be much harder/more expensive than fish...

oh sorry lol this was posted in the fish forum so I figured you were talking about fish.

There are many great turtle species that do well in captivity. For hopefully obvious reasons, I'm limiting this to the discussion of freshwater turtles.

Plenty of people keep turtles in medium sized glass aquariums, but personally I prefer to give turtles more room. Even 6'' shell diameter turtles will make more than full use of a ~6'x2' indoor pond/tub. I prefer to have a couple turtles in a larger enclosure than a single turtle in a small enclosure. If you want turtles, I'd suggest at least a 100 gal aquarium.

Here's a link to the types of tubs that are often used for indoor turtle care:

http://lllreptile.com/store/catalog/...aterland-tubs/

Regular water changes and filtration are a kick in the pants with turtles. They are messy, messy creatures. Hauling and disposing of a hundred gallons (or more) every weekend, and refilling your tub can be a pain. However I've done it with fish aquariums, and if you love your critters enough then it's not that big of a deal. I wasn't kidding though in my previous post that it feels like the amount of personal energy required for keeping captive water-based creatures happy goes up exponentially with the amount of water you keep them in.