I have what I believe to be a standard painted turtle. I found it when it was only about the size of silver dollar coin and have had it ever since. His\her shell is about 2 inches now and I would say it is about 6 months old, or there abouts. It's been in a 20 gallon long tank from the get go. I've recently been donated a Filstar XP3 filter to use. With the new filter addition I decided to fill the tank all the way up and built and above tank basking area.
Here is the point of my post. I made the enclosure out of Lexan (a form of acrylic). I originally used aquarium safe silicone to hold it together, but the silicone wasn't strong enough. In the end I used a bonding glue specifically for plastics from the brand Loctite. My obvious concern are the fumes that may be put off when the heat lamp and such are introduced. This basking are will obviously be above water. Does anyone have any thoughts on whether this could be an issue (fumes)? Would running a bead of aquarium safe silicone\sealant over top of the seams (covering\sealing the bonding glue) potentially help if this is in fact an issue? I've attached pictures of the enclosure. It's kind of hard to make heads or tails of it, but once you see the ramp part the layout of it should make sense.
Thanks is advance and I look forward to your insight. I'm really enjoying the information on this site.
