Is it illegal to own, sell, or posses a red eared slider less than 2"?

Hello, they are illegal but they are legal for educational purposes like what you guys are doing. Since you guys are taking care of it, it is not illegal. You guys will need a much bigger tank for them when they grow bigger, but for now, a ten gallon tank should be fine. You will need a filter and a heater. The water temperature should be about 70-80 degrees farenheit. You should also have a land deck for the turtles to climb on and dry off to prevent it from gettting fungus. Knowing that you have a basking area you will also need a uvb and uv light. They are not similar to the basking light you have. The basking light is used for warmth while the uvb and uv light is used for making essential vitamins for the turtle. So please get a uvb and uv lightfor your turtles for more information, you could go to this site...http://wetwebmedia.com/FWSubWebIndex/fwlvstkind2.h... go to the bottom of the page and it will have tons of information about turtles, you may even ask the experts that work at wetwebmedia.com. You can also try this site, http://wetwebmedia.com/FWSubWebIndex/redearsliders...

The 4 inch law only applies to selling them. It is not illegal to buy them or possess them. And despite the law, I've seen many, many pet stores selling them anyway, and I've never heard of anybody getting in trouble for it. There are currently lobbyists pushing for the law to be removed from the books. The reason for the law was because of baby turtles carrying salmonella, not because children were choking on them as one person answered. Children can choke on many things which are legal, such as coins, bottle caps, candy, and other small objects which are all legal. And what about baby lizards and snakes, as well as goldfish? The reason people want to revoke the law is because studies have found that all turtles can carry salmonella regardless of size, as well as many other legal animals such as iguanas.

actually anything less than 4 is illegal to sell or take from the wild. Saddly the biggest problem with the tiny ones was small children putting them in their mouths and chocking...lol..(i know not funny but true) I have one I adopted from a friend that is maybe 2-3 inches he's pretty tiny. a few things I have learned from research is the water needs to be twice as deep as their shell from top to bottom to prevent getting stuck upside down or something and drowning the basking area should be .....(you may need to double check this) about 90 degrees water needs a heater should be in the mid 70's to 80's definitly will need a filter they are really cute but very messy..lol...and a uva/uvb light. my favorite site is www.redearedslider.com they have forums nad some very informational pages and everyone is very helpful thye helped us get ours set up. Since you have two I would recomend going with a much bigger tank as they grow pretty fast and need a lot of space and its cheaper in the long run to go bigger now and they have massive a,mounts of space then to have to continually upgrade your tank ours is actually in a rubbermaid bucket right now with roughly 10-15 gallons of water about 7 inches deep we built his basking spot with some left over rocks and such from our lizzards so he can climb up on it under the water too. he really likes to hide uner it. we got him some turtle food from the local pet store its just pellets and he eats 3-4 a day they are pretty little and about twice a week i will drop a leaf of collard greens or a piece of carrot in there ( shaved in slices with the potato peeler) ....also they need calcium we went with cuttle bone made for birds simply because its cheaper than the turtle ones and the exact same thing i broke them into like three pieces and just let it float around the tank and your turtle will nibble on it i've heard that some of them will occasionally nibble on it but our eats it like its chocolate for turtles...lol..(he was very deprived for a really long time definitly hadn't been taken care of right) if you put a little time and research into getting them set up right you will have two happy healthy turtles in no time ours had majorly stunted growth (hes over 4 yrs old) but in the last two months we've had him hes started growing and become way more active the people we got him from didnt even know he was an aquatic turtle. so you guys really are at least headed in the right direction. Good luck!