Turtle tales

We can haz turtle.  In fact, we has haz turtle since we bought the house we're in!  Our place had a rather...unique wavy in-ground tank, in which our turtle, Squirtle (most common turtle name, EVAH!) resided since the people before us built this house in the early '90s.

Squirtle, and our giant goldfish (the fish has sadly gone to the pond in the sky).

Being an inherited creature, we didn't have a licence for him until very recently *gasp*.  That's right, our family was living on the edge, walking the line, practically criminal!!

Anyhoo, as part of our never ending renovations before we sell the house, we decided to knock out this paragon of eighties architecture. 

The old tank that was built in, complete with kid-proofing and kid.

Tres classy!

Cleaning it out on moving day.

Which involved re-homing Squirtle.  One 4ft tank and much hefting later, we have a temporary spot for him in our lounge room.  When the painting of the new bits of wall are done, he'll go in our doorway to greet the world.

New tank, precariously resting on a TV stand.

 

Catching all the feeder fish that lived in the old pond! Hours of fun...

Given how much fun he's had since we moved him into the new tank, I now feel like we'd been keeping him in some kind of turtle-torture cave for the past few years.  Still, he's out now, and loving it.

Turtle renovation: done!

Oh, extra bonus shot of our other fish tank.  You can't keep fish in with a turtle (unless they're big enough), the turtle will eat them!  As we learned to our shame...it was two fish-buying sessions and a lot of "where did those fish go!?" before we worked it out. 

So when the kid wants goldfish and guppies, you get a kids tank for them.  So we did.