whats the best way to take care of a soft shell turtle?

Soft shell turtles are generally more prone to health problems as they obviously have a softer shell than normal, so it is not advised for beginners. A good beginner turtle is a Red-Ear Slider, Painted Turtle, or a Map Turtle. However, their overall setup if you can fork over the money and do it right is not incredibly difficult and they aren't expensive to feed like some Snapping Turtles can be. You need a good-sized tank and really are better kept in ponds as adults as most of them will reach over a foot in length. My family keeps ours in a simple 20 gallon right now, but my uncle has a turtle pond in which he's been keeping lots of turtles for over 20 years now, so we have a deposit area if they get too big. Filtration is important as you need really clean water, so better to go with an overpowered filter which is meant for a much larger tank. Particular species may be found in more brackish water, so you may need to add aquarium salt, which also helps to decrease risk for infections. As soft shells, they do have a higher risk for scratching their shells and developing an infection, so using an ultrafine substrate like sandblasting sand is the ideal substrate. They like to burrow a lot, so this is where a soft substrate is important. They aren't real picky about diet; they'll eat everything from pellets to fish to crickets. The ones we have recognize who brings the food so well that they'll follow the finger to the food and eat it, even if it's just a dead cricket. This is kind of helpful when you keep other reptiles and a few die, so you give the dead ones to the turtle in addition to the regular diet.

That is not a beginner's turtle. They need to be isolated from other turtles and have a sandy substrate. They will spend most of their time buried, lying in wait for the bait fishes you are going to stock the tank with.

elaborate, there is many different types of shoft shell turtles. i honeslty would go for more of a traditional type of turtle like a pearl river map turtle, they have a very neat back. im not the greatest with shoft shell turtle knowledge but i know my stuff about pond and river turtles and tortoises. tell me what kind you are getting and ill get back to you