Habitat - Indoor

I don't know if this is the right place to post this kind of thread, please move it if needed and let me know. Always under construction and always looking for advice on better ways to do things, etc.

We got two RES in 2013 - brought them home from the beach (souvenir shop) in the little plastic house - had NO IDEA what I was in for...

Shortly after we got home, one of them died. We were all pretty upset, but not knowing anything about taking care of turtles, we bought 2 more to replace that 1, so now we have 3.
I apparently don't have a single photo of their next home - it was a 5 gallon tank that sat on the kitchen counter. I'm fairly certain it only had a flourescent bulb - sorry. We didn't know...
When we realized they needed more room, we started doing things a little more right. Bought a 75 gal tank and proper lighting. This was, I'm guessing, in 2014.

They seemed pretty happy and we didn't have any problems - other than fighting with the filters and lots of cleaning. Pics from 2016 to Jan 2017.

Now - Feb 2017 - as they have gotten bigger and I've learned more, I'm trying to redo everything to make life better for them. Until I can find the $$$ (and room) to set up a 200+ gallon dream world, this is going to have to work.
Gravel all gone, trying things for basking area - looking at ATBAs, wedging a piece of cork bark in the tank, or improving this PVC pipe "shelf". Filtration also upgraded to a Penn Plax Cascade 1500 (if you've seen my other posts asking about it, I think I said it was a 1000 there - it's actually a 1500).
I know the stacked rocks are pretty iffy in this pic - they are VERY temporary. I put the PVC shelf in tonight, and stacked the rocks to help them for tonight. Gonna take down the stack before I go to bed and come up with something a little safer tomorrow.

I will try to keep this thread updated as I add/change stuff. Hopefully I can help someone along the way - either by giving them an idea (I sure have studied other people's ideas enough LOL) or I can serve as a "don't do it this way" for someone!

Great thread Jeff. I think most of us have gone through this. I've been using ceramic tile over my PVC dock, it works great and looks the same after all these years.

Got the sand in tonight, and I reworked the basking area - made it smaller. They really like this one flat rock, so I basically just made the dock a stand for it. First real shot at a climbing ramp has a huge piece of cork bark strapped to a piece of plastic. This will probably change fairly soon, but it works for now. Got it in the tank, and even with sand in the legs and base of the stand, and with the rock on top, it tried to float - so I added the big rocks to the bottom. Also put in some small plants to start decorating.... don't know how long they will last but I'll see. Plan to put some river rocks around the bottom and on the basking platform in the next couple of days.
Water is still pretty cloudy, but these pics are only about 2 hours after I put the sand in.

Question - is there an issue with the water coming back into the tank in the middle instead of at one end? I'm a little concerned about the water basically going straight back to the filter intake (and just filtering the same few gallons over and over) No reason to worry with this? Guess the turtles will keep it mixed up enough?
Also looking for recommendations on an inexpensive 24" LED bar for the top. The only "non special" light I have is a full width 48" flourescent, and since it's full width, it limits me a little with the basking/UVB fixture on the left half of the tank.

What filter is it? With most filters, it's just moving enough water to catch some debris. For LEDs, IKEA has some pretty cheap ones, or you can get a kit from Amazon and cut it to length. The sand looks great in the tank.

The filter is a Penn Plax Cascade 1500

How do you like it? You might get some more circulation "dead spots" but it shouldn't be an issue.

Habitat - Indoor :: My turtle habitat progression through the years

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