Before I start, yes I know the tank is too small, this means we're working on it please don't just flame what we have
. The information available today is worlds different than it was 20 years ago.My mom has a RES who is about 18 years old, she's a big girl, haven't stuck a ruler in there in a while but her shell is over a foot. She currently lives in a 75 gallon, it's about 2/3 full of water and has a plexiglass platform to rest on. She has a heat lamp and 'sun' bulbs, I asked my mom she confirmed that they're not regular lights but didn't remember the name and knew that they were whatever light that was supposed to imitate the sun. I recently got a saltwater fishtank and my mom is starting to notice what a 'nice' tank could look like so I'm planning to help her get something new for Franklin.
So far the options I've come up with are getting a preformed pond, building a plywood platform around it for basking and resting, and I'll connect it to a sump for filtration. There's several preformed ponds for sale online locally that we could get and we're on a tight budget.
My other idea is to make a plywood 'tank'. I've seen Pond Shield be used to make tanks and I figured we could do something like that, same deal with drilling a hole for a sump and whatnot. Only down side of this is that it's fairly boring looking, and you can't see through the sides. You can't see through the side of the preformed pond, but at least it's a bit more aesthetically pleasing than a giant rectangle.
My question is what do you think would be best? About how much swimming to basking room should we have? How much length and depth should she have? Right now the poor thing scurries off the platform and bangs right into the side of the tank, we want to make sure she has room to do whatever she'd like to do best. I'm not exactly sure what that is though, I don't know if they're a species that likes to swim a whole lot or just hang out. This has to go indoors, we live in New Jersey so outdoors isn't an option.
