Habitat - Indoor

First let me say, poor little Frankie. Living with one eye has to be tough. Next, awesome little setup. no concerns about her playing a Harry Houdini?

new pic

cutepanda86 wrote:First let me say, poor little Frankie. Living with one eye has to be tough. Next, awesome little setup. no concerns about her playing a Harry Houdini?

do you mean like dig and bury herself? not really i want her to be able to do what she wants so if she burys herself then she burys herself

Hello everyone, I don’t have a RES but I do have two Southern Painted Turtles. Here is my ATBA for my 75 gallon, enjoy.

Great looking tank at ATBA. Clean and simple... looks striking and modern.

steve wrote:Great looking tank at ATBA. Clean and simple... looks striking and modern.

Thanks Steve, my turtles healthy and happy. I try my best to keep the conditions perfect, I guess you can say I am a little OCD

I think a lot of RES keepers are OCD. What kind of mesh/grill are you using over the ATBA? You might also want to consider switching to sand and some drift wood, as those rocks will trap a lot of debris.

steve wrote:I think a lot of RES keepers are OCD. What kind of mesh/grill are you using over the ATBA? You might also want to consider switching to sand and some drift wood, as those rocks will trap a lot of debris.

I got the mesh from Orchard Hardware Supply, it comes in rolls and it was the thickest they had. I used wired cutters and trimmed them down to size.

Excellent set up! OCD is my middle name, I'm constantly fiddling and I really need to stop. lol

A big giant thanks to everyone here for all the great ideas and pictures. We finally got our FX5 and upgraded from a 55 Gallon tank to a 125.

Anyway this is a little tiny build thread. A very special Thank you for VeipaCray and Steve, who I am sure I drove crazy with questions and yet They were very gracious and patient answering them in depth.

125 Tank and stand I found on Craigslist for $300 which also came with a rena xp4

The new tank came with a piece of Plexiglass that obviously replaced the glass cover at one time, so we cut it for basking area and added a double sided ramp with the extra cuts. I was not sure what I was going to use for grip, but I was at Lowes looking for something else and ran across a roll of Gutter Guard that was Perfect and a 20 foot roll was $3.25. My son had some of these high powered velcro strips he used in a science project we added that to the under side of the gutter guard and to the plexiglass, so when we want to clean the plexigalss we just undo the velcro.

We always have had an above tank basking area, but I was a little worried about the weight on our floor with the new tank.
I saw a cool Idea here on Turtle talk with a suspended basking area, so we gave it a shot. I had an old outdoor extension cord that was shorted out (the big orange kind). So I stripped out a bunch of the black covered copper wire double twisted it to make sure it was plenty strong and attached it to the four corners of the basking area. Total cost of the basking area was $3.25 for the gutter guard.

On the advice of all of you, I went down to the pool store and bought 100 pounds of Pool Filter sand, $24 for two 50 pound bags. I put it a 5 gallon bucket and cleaned it all out.. We added it to the tank before the water and it came out about two inches deep all the way across. I then slightly grated it a little lower on the intake side to a little higher on output side. Using Steve's suggestion we put a large plate in the middle right on the sand and poured the water onto the plate which basically helped with little to no clouding of the water.

We have always had an empty bottom tank, so I was a little worried about the sand getting into the new FX5, so I added four very flay creek rocks on top of the sand directly under the intake so the turtles can't kick the sand up into the intake. Now that I have been watching the kick and play for a couple days the pool filter sand barely moves up more than an inch and falls right back down. However, I am keeping the creek rock anyways, because it adds a little character.

I wish we would have found this board 4 years ago when they were babies, I could have saved myself TONS of dough. Anyway a big thanks to everyone here, with your pictures, suggestions, and help, I think we have finally have a somewhat easy tank to keep clean, and we have some VERY VERY happy turtles! A few pictures here of the brats in the new palace.

Oh and one more of the other brat who was very jealous that the turtles were getting all the attention for a week

Sorry about quality of pictures but we took them with our phones.

Looks good. Thanks for sharing. Love the dog...

really cool upgrade.
how big are the turtles? fish?!

2 turtles about 5-6 inches long each

Awesome stuff! Looks like they will be very happy there.

Thanks everyone.

One more improvement. Went down to pick up my son from football practice and stopped in the flea market looking for some cool plants.
Long story short turns out the lady running this booth had some incredible fake grass made for ponds. Anyway she starts asking me what I needed it for and I told her turtle tank. She says, oh really we have two RES at home what kind do you have, and I say 2 RES, and she was all excited. Anyway she helped me find some cool stuff about $60 bucks worth and she says just give me a ten dollar bill.

Anyway Here is the tank now with the grass.

Habitat - Indoor :: POST YOUR BASKING AREA PICTURES HERE !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

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