Marisa - I'll agree 95 is a bit warm... and I meant the air temp should be a max of 95 and not really ever go above that. If that's the case, I think it would be fine as lots of places have 95 degree weather... but yes, it's definitely on the warm side. I only said that because his water is on the warm side at 80.2 degrees, which to me, means that the basking area needs to be at least 90.2 and not really more than 95.
I'm still a rookie, and I've only ever set up 4 different turtle enclosures, but I've found that water temperature and basking area temperature are very important for happy healthy turtles. I pretty much live by the rule that the basking area should be 10 to 15 degrees warmer than the water temperature.
With that said, it can be pretty hard to hit an exact water temperature with many water heaters (you want it to go up 2 degrees, so you turn it up one click and it goes up 6 degrees), and it definitely can be hard to hit an exact basking temperature by moving a light bulb closer or further away. That's why I need a 5 degree range of temps that I'm trying to hit.
So after doing my research, I've pretty much settled on setting the water temp in the 74 to 79 degree range, and then based on that, the basking temp 10 to 15 degrees higher.
We've only kept 4" to 6" turtles, but they all seem very happy. I know that one of our turtle tanks, the one that houses two turtles, has the water at 79 and the basking are at 93 or 94 degrees. I think the other tank runs at about 76 or 77 degrees for the water and 91 for the basking area.
Do you think the tank I have running at 79 water / 94 basking is too warm?
They seem to really be doing well. They are rescues, and one has retained scutes and really needs to shed (which after a year or so, she seems to have finally started - yay!) so I figured that being on the warmer side might help encourage shedding.
Do these temps sound too high? Sorry to hi-jack a thread, not my intent - but now I'm worried!