my friend recently won a baby turtle (red eared slider i believe) at a fair and decided she could not take care of it, so she gave it to me. i am really good with taking care of animals and love them but i am worrying about this turtle. she gave it to me in the cage she won it in, which is almost like a very small plastic foot by half foot cage thats probably 3/4 foot high. i fill it up with clean pure chlorine free water and fill it up a little more than its shell hits the water and give it baby turtle pellets to eat. she also has rocks on one half of the cage above the water so she can "sun bathe." my concerns that i need help with are these: my house is set to about 70-75 degrees however my room is in the basement so it always feels cold like 65ish there..is that too cold for the turtle? also she never eats..why is that? also it seems as though she is always sleeping when in the water but when i take her out of the cage she loves walking around..is it bad to take her out of the cage? and are the rocks on 1/2 of the side of the cage a bad thing? i ultimately want shelly to be happy i just need help! suggestions please would be very helpful!!

Ugh, these poor prize turtles are usually in horrible health to begin with, and they're handed out left and right to people who have no idea... adding to the misconception that they're no-maintenance throw-away type pets. None of this is going to be meant as a swipe at you, it just ticks me off that a) these animals are used as prizes in stupid games and b) people continue playing these stupid games and encouraging the people who use them as prizes to keep using them as prizes.

First things first, a proper setup for your little friend will likely cost over $100, so get ready...

1) tank is WAY too small, general rule of thumb for aquatic turtle species is 10 gallons of water per inch of carapace (top shell) length, and RESs can reach 8 to 12 inches as adults depending on gender.

2) heat and lighting, room temperature anywhere in your house right now is too cold... 85 to 88 degrees for basking area, so you'll need a heat lamp (get a properly sized tank first, you don't want to cook your turtle)... if he can't reach proper body temperature, he won't have an appetite and can't digest any food he does eat. You'll also need a UV-B light... without exposure to UV-B, he can't produce vitamin D3, without D3, he can't metabolize calcium, which will lead to a soft and/or misshapen shell and a horrible drawn out death. (I'll actually beat Oikos to it this time) Liver dusted in bone meal can alleviate the need for UV-B lighting... liver's a good source of D vitamins. Just remember, putting your turtle in a window will do no good, glass blocks 99.999% of UV-B radiation, direct sunlight makes it impossible to control the temps inside the tank, and promotes algae growth. pets question and answers,www.5d2d.com

3) Filtration... you will want a filter rated for at least twice the water volume it will be filtering... you'll still be doing water changes on a regular basis (depending on the size of the tank and the size of the turtle, as often as weekly... the bigger the tank the longer you can go between water changes) and cleaning/changing the filter medium between water changes, but without proper filtration, you'll be doing it every day or so.

4) Stress... your turtle's life has been full of more stress than you can comprehend... stress lowers immune function and appetite in reptiles. The best thing you can do for your turtle right now is get a properly sized tank and a heat lamp, even if you have to hold off on the UV-B and filter for a while, and leave the poor thing alone. Under normal circumstances it can take a turtle a week or so to get settled into a new environment well enough to want to begin eating, and your turtle is not dealing with normal circumstances. Offer a little bit of food once a day (there are plenty of good care sheets online for RESs that include good choices to put on the menu... keep in mind that if the pellets you have came with the turtle, they're probably junk. Even a high quality pelletized turtle food should at most be 25% of total diet) you could even purchase a few feeder fish (try to avoid goldfish) or grass shrimp from your local pet store and just keep track of how many you have in there... still offer other food though, in small quantities until you know the turtle is eating... until that time, keep activity in the room it's in to a minimum, and leave it in the tank until it's settled in, poor thing's probably freaking out.

5) Your basking area... while your turtle will need somewhere to get completely out of the water whenever it wants to, this needs to be positioned under your heat lamp, and it's best not to stack rocks... landslides can happen, and turtles can drown. There are floating docks available at most pet stores, I've seen cork bark used to good effect with small turtles, you can wedge a piece of plywood into the tank at an angle, there are all kinds of options that pose no risk to your turtle.