Noddy is not afraid of me anymore

I know its been a long time since I last posted an update, but I was busy with my marriage, a job switch and then some.. Ohh, and I’m also married now, if I hadnt told this earlier already, but the good part there is, my wife loves our turtle equally. 

One turtle, not two. Penny had become severely aggressive towards Noddy and had to be given back to where it came from. She tried to bite Noddy several times, and considering my more than two years of attachment with Noddy now, Penny had to go. 

Getting back to Noddy, he has a tank upgrade. Its wayyy bigger than the previous one, and it keeps him super happy. 

I’m also in the middle of moving to a new house, where he gets an 8 ft long tank with Koi fish in it.. Knowing how good Noddy is to its tankmates, I expect the Koi to survive.

So back to the topic now. Yes, Noddy’s become super sweet to me, its like I rescued him from Penny and he is happy about it. He allows me to touch him on the basking platform, walks to me when I get him on the floor, crawls up the platform when he sees me entering the room. Its just adorable to have a turtle do that. 

  

Penny: Noddy’s new tank mate!

I have had fish for a while and always bought them in a pair. Then I got myself a turtle, Noddy, and I always thought, why shouldn’t he have a tank mate too? I thought of adding another fish, but I didn’t want it to become food.

So after some research of how turtles react to company, I decided on a female RES turtle around the same size as Noddy or bigger. Penny, a female RES turtle is approximately 8-9 months old, with a beautiful shell pattern on her top. For her introductory post, I was lucky enough to get a very good picture of Penny and Noddy. Here’s introducing Penny to the world.

Here are some more pics of Penny basking..

Fresh addition to tank – Sand

There’s always a huge amount of thought that goes into deciding what substrate to use for turtles. Gravels that are small can cause impaction, large ones could be a tough job to clean.

So after a lot of thought, Adit’s decided on Sand. Its easy to clean, you simply need a siphon to pick up the dirt/poop that sits on top, and it doesn’t cause impaction on ingesting by a turtle.

Here’s a look at how the final setup looks. The sand is still to settle down fully, so the water is a little blurred. I’ll add updated pics when it’s settled completely.

Noddy knows where to sleep!

I got Noddy a box bed around mid January this year. Its a makeshift box made from a shoe box, with a soft towel wrapped inside, that gives him a feeling of being secure. Over the past month and half, I bring him to the room around 10-11 pm and let him lose. Then after sometime of roaming around, he’s lifted and guided towards the mouth of the box, so that he walks into it from the same place everyday after the same routine.

A couple of days back, I experimented with only bringing him to the room and not taking him to the box, and voila, he walked straight in, all by himself. Noddy’s been repeating the same since three days now. After roaming around the room for 10-15 minutes, he finds his way to the box from anywhere around the room.

Showering some love in the sunlight

I’ve been known to be the mischevious hiding kind of turtle to Adit. So well, today, I thought I’ll shower some love for him. And he rewarded my well by clicking some great pics. Check them out here.

Eating out of Adit’s hands!

Hey guys, so time to show you how I eat.

I’m currently fed ReptoMin Baby turtle pellets with the occasional feast of carrots, lettuce and raddish leaf. I also have two Java ferns and an Anubias plant in my tank, so I can nibble on them when I feel like. Anubias is a tough plant. I’m still pretty small to chew on it so I normally stay away from it.

Adit feeds me pellets by hand and so we’ve decided to put together a small video of how good I am at catching them in a go or two. What you’ll also see is him holding it higher than normal, only for the video. Its more like, testing my jumping out of water skills and putting it for you guys to see, but its not like that all the time.

So here’s the video, sit back and enjoy the show!

Noddy poses for the camera and then goes hiding

Its rare for Noddy to stay in one place when I’m around. He’s an explorer, very skillful at climbing over whatever obstruction I put for him. You’ve already seen him get over the little box I made for him for sun basking.. Check here.

So this time around, Noddy was checking out the bed, and the pillows, looking for a place to hide. And when I brought the mobile camera right at his face, he stopped for a while, while I clicked some close ups, and then went back to what he does best. Explore.

And here’s the final escape. Realizing there’s no way escaping the camera if he keeps roaming on the bed, Noddy finally dashed under the pillow.

I get new plants in my aquarium!

I’ve always had a bland aquarium with a couple of pebbles, some shells, an exo terra dock, a heater and a power filter. I loved the swimming space I got initially but quickly got bored. Adit understood I need some stimulation, or maybe he was equally interested in getting some burden of cleaning off his shoulders.

He flew in some water plants for me, from Coimbatore in southern India and a GeoSystem Mopani driftwood. He planted them in my aquarium supported by the driftwood and weighed down by the gravel till they grew roots, and he thought me being the little turtle I am right now, I won’t pull them out or eat them straight away. Poor Adit, he forgot I’m Noddy, the naughty little turtle. And while left for his usual chores around the house, I went about ravaging the plants, and even pushing around gravel, till I was caught. Lesson learnt: Good times don’t last long. 😛

 

So now there’s a small devilish green net made of some really strong plastic that just doesn’t let me go through to the plants. There’s a beautiful little world in there, a driftwood that’s turned my water brown, some gravels that keep the plants rooted, two java ferns that I love the taste of, an anubias, that I think is very hard to bite into so I simply try to tear it, and a money plant, that is probably there only for bio-filtration. I try my best to break the green net, poking my head through, pulling with claws and what not, I even tried to bite my way through, but its very strong, its devilish.

Have a look at the video, it’ll show you what I’m missing. The java ferns do sometimes grow outside the net, so I get to bite it and trim it with my beak. Hopefully once the plants are rooted, Adit will let me access them, which is about a month away.

Noddy manages to get out of his basking box

Noddy has a wooden box that I use to bask him in the sun. I also keep a thermometer inside to keep a check if it gets too hot for him. There’s a shaded area and then there are these corners that are covered with a mat to keep Noddy from getting out.

Today was the first time Noddy figured out he could climb onto the purple mat that I use to block off the corners. The cut side of the mat was on the inside and this little smarty pants figured out so soon that the mat could bend to his benefit. And boy is this little turtle strong. Have a look as he manages his escape.

 

I get a new sleeping place..

Since the past couple of months, I’ve been sleeping on my basking platform, slightly submerged in water, so its easy for me to simply reach out to breathe and get back in water to maintain my temperature. I also feel safer in water than on land.

We turtles are ectothermal, we get our heat from our surroundings, and its winter time in Delhi. The air inside the house can be as cold as 15°C at night, with my basking lamp off. So Adit made me a small sleeping box which stays in his room, with his favourite towel as a bed for me to get cozy in..

He uses the thermometer to keep a check on the temperatures inside. And it stays warm in there. So I snuggle deep into the towel and sleep..

My box is besides the oil filled heater, so it stays around 25-27°C inside, and its very comfortable.

Adit got the idea from Novroz, who keeps her turtle Papoe in a similar box. She’s got some of the most amazing turtles and Adit wants me to be just like them, warm and loving towards him. Adit hopes that I’ll start trusting him soon enough.

And thats me hiding inside the box. Time to sleep until morning. Good night till then…