Habitat - Indoor :: Moe's new 75G home - build thread.

[VeipaCray]

rsour, per your request here's what I came up with. Rough numbers.



A very spoiled turtle: Priceless.

[CollinTrab]

rustoleum stone paint is an awesome idea. great setup!

[VeipaCray]

Thanks CollinTrab.

Here's a picture of an exhausted purigen bag and one that's been regenerated. For those of you not familiar with Purigen, it's a synthetic product from Seachem that is a substitute for carbon. It has two major advantages over carbon. First, you can regenerate (clean) it and use it over and over. Second, it doesn't leech any phosphates back into the water like carbon can. You can get a 100mL bag of the stuff for around $8 online. Seachem claims that will treat up to 100 gallons. I use 2 x 250mL bottles each in a separate media bag. While one is in the filter, the other gets regenerated. I keep swapping them back and forth every time I clean my filter. Anyway.... here's the pic.

You can see how much gunk the purigen pulls out of the water. Purigen gives you crystal clear water. The bag on the right has been in my FX5 for a month. The bag on the left has been regenerated and is ready to go in.

[VeipaCray]

My wife asked me to move the tank out of the spare bedroom and into the back of the family room. In doing so, I changed the background on the tank to black. I had a graphic background from seaview and applied with their special seaview sauce. It didn't stick that good and had lots of air bubbles. I went back to a watercolors background. NOTHING sticks bettter than these backgrounds other than paint. These backgrounds are like sheet vinyl that go on with soapy water. When they dry, they need to be peeled or even scraped off. Not your ordinary tape in place background.

Anywho... tank is in family room. The glass is filthy from being handled and moved down a flight of stairs yesterday. Background is black and I need to come up with some decorations. Ideas?

[kriminologie]

If it were my tank and I had some disposable income, I'd get some stuff from the guy Bob who does the driftwood platforms and decor: http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.1164639633130.2025760.1142049784&l=551d58b8c9.

My own tank has a single decoration -- a T-Rex skull -- which is a theme I'm going to go with in the future.

[VeipaCray]

Wow he does some nice work. Thanks for the heads up, I didn't know about his work at all. I want to get a few things for that tank and some driftwood would be very cool.

[Snowboi]

Yea, Bobmc (the guy that makes those basking area's/has the driftwood) does a great job. He is a member on another turtle forum. Here here is his tank.

You setup came out nicely Any plans for plants or fishes?

[VeipaCray]

Thanks for the kind words.

I've tried plants AND various fish twice now. Moe ate EVERYTHING.

feeder fish - gobbled
mollies - nom nom
pleco- yum
platies - snack time
small cichlid - very tasty
$40 worth of random plants - john deer has nothing on this mower

So now I'm thinking driftwood, maybe a hollow log, a few larger rocks. Dunno. I'd love to see some nice aquascaping examples that work with turtles.

[Snowboi]

You prolly already know, but adding more hiding places helps alot. I plan to have like one corner covered in fake/real plants, so shrimp and fish can hide. Mine does the same thing with plants, well the real ones actually, so thats why I plan to mix them in with fake plants, like have 1 real plant per 2 fake plants.

Good luck on finding driftwood/hollow log, I've been looking aswell, I came across some, but they wanted $40+ for small ones. If I coem across some more, I'll let you know.

Edit: Because I have very few hiding spots in the tank, my turtle does catch them, but I have seen a few live longer than I figured, they usually last a month or two.

But I found a decent look hollow log on ebay for around $20., here, maybe you like it, maybe you dont, I was really looking for something more realistic.

[kriminologie]

I'm pretty sure your turtle would decimate any ghost shrimp, but I guess you could give a couple a shot. If they survive, great, and if not, your tank will remain Moe's buffet.

[steve]

Here is Bob's page on AustinsTurtlePage:

http://www.austinsturtlepage.com/Articl ... atform.htm

[VeipaCray]

Thanks for the links everyone.

Snowboi> I tried creating hiding places by putting a ton of plants in the tank. If Moe couldn't catch a fish, moe ate the plants until the fish were found. I'm not so concerned with the price. I just want something that will look nice in the tank. Finding a large enough hollow log that looks decent has been challenging.

Kriminologie> you can barely see the ghost shrimp. I've had them in an aquarium in the past.

Steve> Thanks for the link. His stuff is cool, but it looks like sculptures to me. I think I'd prefer something more natural looking... more like a pile of driftwood or at least a sculpture that might resemble something found naturally occurring. A giant driftwood sculpture in the shape of a 7 seems out of place to me aesthetically. I need to find a site with pictures of nice aquascaping and copy one that I like. I'm so not creative when it comes to this stuff.

[sflemin2]

Looks like you need to take a trip to the beach for some driftwood! I went to dog grooming school in Erie PA and I believe they had a TON of drift wood on the beach. We stole some for my mom haha. You would have to sanitize it and stuff but at least you could have a variety to chose from! I would do some research on nearby beaches and see your option. I personally willuse any excuse to go to the beach .

The tank looks awesome.. I am very jealous! I saw someone mentioned a bigger basking area and you were concerned about cleaning the tank. Is the tile glued down? (I just skimmed over this entire thread). I think I would just add tiles and lift them off when it was time to clean

[VeipaCray]

The basking platform is plenty big. It's roughly 16.5" by 12". Big enough for 1 turtle. Probably big enough for 2 turtles. No the tile isn't glued down at all. I cut it to fit just inside the rim of the tank. The weight of the tile holds it in place. It's a fairly heavy porcelain tile. The ramp is epoxied to the underside of the tile. That rests inside the lip of the tank on 3 sides. The rest of the hood for the ATBA sits on the upper rim of the tank.

Heh... go to the beach and get driftwood. You obviously live in a nicer part of the US than I do. I live in the Chicago suburbs. If I go to the Chicago "beaches" all I'm going to find are used condoms, broken beer bottles, and hypodermic needles. I doubt any of that would go over well in the turtle tank.

[Shelby Craig]

only bad thing is the yankee stuff in the back ground, coming from a rangers fan.