Hi Carollee and welcome to The Tortoise Table.
Russian tortoises have great personalities (as I'm sure you have found out)! In case you don't already have a good care sheet for your tortoises, here is a link to one:
https://russiantortoise.net/index.htm that is designed for people living in the USA. We are based in the UK, and we use this care sheet, which is similar:
https://www.tortoise-protection-group.o ... 014New.pdf (we call them Horsfield tortoises here). Have a look through the care sheets and I hope they are useful.
Regarding their diet, you are right in thinking that this species of tortoise should not have fruit in its diet (and tomatoes count as a fruit). This is not to do with parasites, but because their digestive system does not cope well with the natural sugars in fruit, and it upsets their gut flora.
Lettuce in general isn't great in quantity because it is what is called a 'wet food'. Tortoises are designed to digest food slowly, in order to get the most nourishment out of it, and 'wet' food goes through their digestive system too quickly. Some lettuce (especially the red and romaine types) are better than others (so it's good you are feeding them those), but really they should be having more substantial leaves and flowers.
I'm guessing that when you say you can't grow anything yourself, it means you live in an apartment or something similar where you have no outdoor space, but could you grow something on a window sill, in a pot, or on a balcony? There are places where you can buy seed mixes for tortoises. Carolina Pet Supply is a reputable company and something like their Broadleaf mix would be good
https://www.carolinapetsupply.com/catal ... x&cPath=41 They also sell dried leaves and flowers that would be good to add to their diet.
There might be plants growing wild near you that could be fed to your tortoises (for example, I think Hibiscus and Mallow grow in SoCal, but do be sure than any leaves or flowers you pick have not been sprayed with insecticide. If you go to our website
https://www.thetortoisetable.org.uk/ , you can use our 'traffic light' filter to produce lists of plants that are good to feed to your tortoise. Just go to this section of the website:
https://www.thetortoisetable.org.uk/pla ... -database/ and scroll down to the section called 'How to Use the Traffic Light Filters' and go from there.
Although we don't recommend feeding many plants in the cabbage family (because they contain goitrogens), Kale
https://www.thetortoisetable.org.uk/pla ... nt=529&c=8 and Pak Choy
https://www.thetortoisetable.org.uk/pla ... nt=231&c=8 are better than most and can be fed in moderation.
Along with a good diet, your tortoises will also need a good calcium supplement to support all of their growing shell and bone, so do make sure they get lots of extra calcium.
Sorry that this is a long post, but I hope that some of it helps, and please come back with any more questions you might have.
Nina
