Habitat - Indoor

VeipaCray wrote:Horizontal braces in a ceiling are referred to as joists.

But joists is such a weird word. Plus if I say I have studs in my garage, it sounds like I have a male harem.

VeipaCray wrote:That's all for now in this class. Your homework: Bring me a Shrubbery!

MEandYouPhoto wrote:

I laughed so hard at that. I may have snorted but I'll never admit it.

steve wrote:Chewy could be a melanistic, which is why he looks different. Thanks for the updates, I think a couple of the RES need closer monitoring of their progress.

I think so too. At least now I can get a good look at them, catch them more easily, and keep an eye on things. I did check Betty's shell pockmark and it looks like I need to take a close-up picture to get any idea of what color it is because when it's wet it looks different.

Update for today:
Everybody looks a lot better. Cleaner, more mobile, and generally more turtle-y. Almost all of the veggies from yesterday are gone, and today they ate all of the sticks (I measured about a shot glass full each for the big ones and a half a shot glass for the little ones). The cuttlebones may have been gnawed on too. Is there anything else I should be supplementing with now that they're in a different environment? Their outside diet also included hyacinth but I'm waiting until I get everything up and working well enough before I put them into the ponds.

I got the lights hung and installed today. I FINALLY found the joists although I really think my ceiling is defective. I wouldn't be surprised; this whole development was part of a class action lawsuit for faulty construction. Anyway, I screwed chains to the ceiling with the lights at a height to where, even if they dropped from my secondary connection, they wouldn't touch the water. Then I plugged in my three-way GFI thingies (which are short enough that they will never touch the water) and hooked the lights into those. It looks far from graceful but it all works and it's safe.

Unrelated, I learned a valuable lesson today: never leave siphoning water unattended. I nearly wrecked my hallway. I do get to do a bit more of a water change than I had originally planned on, which ... could be good. I found the baby molly this morning and caught it so I didn't siphon it out accidentally, and I found the female molly too. She looked sick so I took her out as well. Maybe she was weak from having that one baby. Her gills were a little pink so I am definitely doing a good water change today. I'm letting the water going in sit for a bit, which is why I'm here now.

I had to move Captain Pleco into Baby Timmy's tank, but I separated them. I had to improvise because of the immediate need (though I do think I should get some of that eggcrate stuff eventually). Captain Pleco is large and gets angry really quickly. But he's safe now. I'm draining the outdoor pond a little more to see if I can get the other two (three?) plecos (Butt and Cheek) out of there. I don't know what I'm going to do next year when they are enormous. I am going to have to get a separate tank just for them. ... actually, I'm probably going to have to do that anyway before long if I find them. Gosh I hope I find them.

I'm so tired. And the acrobatics I've had to do this morning to install stuff... I should have gotten a video.

LMAO @ Meandyouphoto.

Hey! I'm not THAT old

LOL! Very entertaining thread! Indoor ponds look great.

i'm no expert, but besides the chipped shell and missing nails, all the "shell issues" look to be just retained scutes!

CactusJohn5 wrote:i'm no expert, but besides the chipped shell and missing nails, all the "shell issues" look to be just retained scutes!

I'm going to start everyone on a schedule of ... whatever they need to get to shedding those next week. Right now, though, I am so, so tired. I'm so tired I'm dreading typing this whole update.

For the last few days I've been draining the outdoor pond to try and catch the pleco(s). Well, yesterday I caught one. Because he was dead.
Then I kept draining the pond because I noticed the water I was draining out of the pool onto the side of the yard by the back wall was actually leaking BACK INTO THE POOL from underground, through the small cracks in the plaster. Lousy. So I plan on draining the entire thing so I can work on fixing whatever needs to be fixed. If it's draining back in through those, it must be draining out through those as well, which can't be good for the surrounding landscape, including our house foundation.

As the water drained, I started trying to catch the goldfish. Those suckers are fast. It was dark and cold by the time the pond water was low enough to successfully catch any, but my husband and I worked for two hours to sweep, strain, net, scoop, and bucket the fish out of the pond. By the time we were done, there were fewer than ten left in there but we weren't going to be able to catch those. The pump wouldn't pump because of the algae and depth, and we couldn't do anything but bucket it out; my back was on fire and I knew I couldn't do that. I know they probably didn't survive the night. I'm sorry, fishies.

I had finished the indoor pond section the other day, and I think it looks nice. I'm satisfied with it but I know it could be improved.

Pictures:

You can see a small turtle basking in that second one. Kind of. The reeds allow me to actually observe the turtles if I open the door quietly enough.

I found some dandelion greens in my produce section and I put them into the basking platform like real plants. The small turtles have already torn down some.

And the big turtles just dragged theirs down into the water and munched.

I have to lower the basking lights down a bit, but that'll take a ladder and muscles I can't use right now.

My sick Dalmatian Molly died, but I found a second baby.

I'll take a picture of the goldfish and mosquitofish in the wooden pond later. I'm going for a nap.
Oh, and this weekend, once I recover, I want to build a wooden shelf to put on the outside of the Big Turtle tank so they can have an easier-for-me-to-reach basking area, with grass. And more room. And it'll be somewhere that I can point the webcam.

(Webcam 1: Big Turtle basking area.
Webcam 2: Underwater in the Small Turtle Plus Fish wooden pond.
Webcam 3: Baby Timmy's tank.)

Sorry to hear about your pleco. Very nice work.

^^^ Thanks.

Felt a little better later on in the day. Made a prototype super charcoal-gravel-sand-lavarock filter setup to help clean the pond with the goldfish in it now. Seems to be working well - water goes in, water comes out, filter doesn't explode, water looks clear.
Also discovered something I could use to make the basking area for the big turtles that doesn't involve me buying anything new. Yay!
And ... I went out back and saw there are probably 30 (!!!) goldfish left and they're all still alive. Project for tomorrow morning: get those fish out of there, even if it means using buckets.

And I think I'm going to replace the lighting setup with hanging powercords (still on GFI dealies) so the cords aren't all over where I frequently stand. One extension cord each with the three-outlet GFI extender at the end. It'll look better too, as well as being more functional.

I am still tired and I have to be up bright and early to work on getting those fish in their new home.

Sounds like you have quite the undertaking going on. lol

Timmy, I am not sure i get it. What was the bamboo like fence for again?

hwwyahu wrote:Timmy, I am not sure i get it. What was the bamboo like fence for again?

Well, it's supposed to make it all look nice AND keep both my kids out. It's 90% kid-deterrent and 10% turtle privacy. Sure, the kids can still get in but they're going to have to move a lot of things to do it so they won't just accidentally fall in.

Put up eggcrate as a ramp to the Big Turtle basking area after failing three times to make the stupid basking box. I'll get to that eventually but this weekend I nearly threw everything into the garbage in frustration.

Got the eggcrate into Baby Timmy's tank to separate Captain Pleco from the rest of the tank. Figured out a flaw in my initial plan so now it's just ... it looks like this:

It's not really big enough for a large pleco but he has his own cave and it's only temporary. Plus he has all those rocks to suck on and I can shove veggies (like zucchini) under the rocks to make them stay within reach.

Thank goodness for Dremel tools and store credit.

That homemade filter of doom mockup that I created works REALLY WELL. I will put together a bigger one once I get the right bottles.

Have I mentioned that I'm tired? I'm still tired and it's hard to type with this bandaid on and my finger still hurts. (viewtopic.php?f=6&t=33584)

OH! I almost forgot! I want to name each pond / tank so I can reference them in a more fun way than "the wooden pond," etc.
So I have the big rubbermaid 300 gallon pond for the big turtles. What should I name it?
And the wooden pond with the small turtles and the fish. What should I name it?
Baby Timmy's tank has Captain Pleco and Firefighter (Baby) Timmy and the Dalmatian Mollies (two babies now!). He also has a palm tree on his basking area so maybe (Something) Oasis.

What should I name that one?

Mount Wannnahockaloogie. LOL No you can't call it that. I like the Oasis idea. Maybe the other one could be the Fire Station (after all you have a fireifghter and a Captain and Dalmatians). lol.

cutepanda86 wrote:Maybe the other one could be the Fire Station (after all you have a fireifghter and a Captain and Dalmatians). lol.

That is so true!!!!!! However I kinda like Mount Wannahockaloogie LOL.

The big turtles are using their basking area! The eggcrate ramp worked! HOORAY! I now can just improve on that instead of making a whole new setup.
... though I may just finish making this stupid thing anyway, even so.

Alright, so I redid the thing. Sort of.

This is how it was last week:

Basking success!

Then I had to put the small turtles into the same tank as the big turtles (sigh) because the fish (the big stupid goldfish that I'm so proud of that I love so much) weren't letting the turtles eat. The second I put ANYTHING into the tank, the fish would swarm it (school it?) and it would be gone. Even lettuce. It took them a few days to eat the dandelion greens but ... still. Also the filtration for the goldfish was a little underpowered to deal with fish and turtles, and, while I planned to increase it, I just felt like it was better to put them all together so they could at least eat.

Now they're all eating just fine and they share.

I knew I had to make the basking area better, though, since everyone's in there, so this is how it came out today:

As you can see in the first picture, the bulbs are hanging. There are six of them, 60w directional floodlights. The heat under them is nice. They are dangling for two reasons: One, because I couldn't figure out how to attach them any other way and still have them be adjustable, and two, if the turtles bump them (not likely unless they're stretching in an acrobatic manner), they will move and be a lot more safe than something mounted on wood that won't move. Behind the six lights are two UV bulb setups that are screwed into the wall.

On top, there, in the second picture, you can see how I did it all. There is a metal closet shelf mounted to a wooden shelf which is mounted to the wall. The cords are all hung between the rungs and wrapped around through the bottom and clamped. Then they're plugged into an industrial strength super power strip of doom, which is plugged into the GFI outlet and the cord is clamped to the shelf and draped down in a loop underneath the bottom shelf. The cords are adjustable for heat reduction if necessary, but I think everything is working out well. I have to go back out there and test the temp again on that shelf but it was looking good when I last checked.

The only way any of these would ever touch the water is if my wall fell down, taking the shelf with it. Everything is screwed, clamped, or otherwise secured. If my wall comes down, I'm going to have bigger things to worry about than if it tripped my GFI because, well, that's my main garage wall.

So, whew. I finally got that done. Nobody's been up there yet today but that's ok, it usually takes them a day or so for them to come back out once I've been inside the tank. There's plenty of room for them to get out and it looks safe to slide off the sides and back into the water, so ... they should be fine. Tomorrow I'm doing my water change with this neat new suction siphon vacuum thing I got on sale, which will be infinitely easier than how I was doing it before (buckets), so it may take them until Monday to get back into the basking groove.

In inside news, yesterday we went to the store and ... uh... well, my kid walked by the tank of Dalmatian Mollies and said, "Look, mom! Mollies like the one that died!" Since there was only one female molly left in our tank, and that one happened to likely be the offspring of the one that died and the male that was still in there, I felt I had to buy a few more. So we got a yellow one, silver one, black one, and dalmatian one, all females.

We have, according to my oldest, Fire, Smoke, Snow, and Cookie.

And our good ol' Captain Pleco.

great set-up! i'm sure the timmys will be basking in no time. as for the mollies, cute names!

Habitat - Indoor :: The Winter Pond for Timmy (not all are Timmy now) (PICS)

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