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Newbie: Turtle Tank

PostPosted: Sun Sep 18, 2005 8:13 am
by tarrish
I've been asking about support for my tank, and now I have a picture so you can see what I've done so far.

I'm a huge newbie to the turtle world. This board has been so much help thus far, but if there are any suggestions on what I should do with this tank, please let me know. (other then obtaining a bigger tank...I must do this, but I have my ten gallon for now)


[img]http://i20.photobucket.com/albums/b243/tarrish/pets/DSCF0332.jpg"[/img]


There's my kids, Kate and Sawyer. :D Thanks for any suggestions.

PostPosted: Sun Sep 18, 2005 8:28 am
by cam722
Ok, I have a few questions and suggestions :)

The water looks a bit cloudy, is it? I'd put some plants in the tank for them so they have something to hide in, float on when resting.. and raise the water level a few more inches. At their size, you could raise the water up to where the top suction cups are. I don't see the basking lamp but I know you said you have one from another post. Is it just a UVB light or a combination UVB/Heat lamp? As I stated in another post, that tank is a bit too small. As a general rule of thumb, it should be 10 gallons of water for each inch of shell. So with 2 new hatchlings you should have started with a minimum of a 20 gallon. The more water, IMHO, the less work on cleaning up :) Also the rocks at the bottom are fine for now, but when you do upgrade, I'd get bigger ones. That all aside, they do look happy :)

PostPosted: Sun Sep 18, 2005 11:32 am
by GouzlanTheAmerican
i cant see the picture. :( i just see the code.

PostPosted: Sun Sep 18, 2005 11:52 am
by cam722
Here is the picture. there are " at the end of the code.. that's why it didn't work. Whenever that happens, I just cut and paste the code and open it that way.. :)

Image

PostPosted: Sun Sep 18, 2005 9:42 pm
by JessicaTS
Is that a pellet stuck in there? And yes the water does seem cloudy. It could be the filter or ammonia.

PostPosted: Mon Sep 19, 2005 4:31 am
by tarrish
The water did seem a little cloudy, so we went to the store, and bought some drinking water for them.

I'm working on getting a bigger tank as we speak. Saving up some money from my next pay check combined with this one.

We just about to raise the water level, and I think the turtles will enjoy that. They are 75% more active with more water level.

When we get the bigger tank I'm defiantly getting bigger rocks.

I'm looking into plants as well.

Do you think fake plants are better or real?

PostPosted: Mon Sep 19, 2005 5:24 am
by tinyslider
Whats up with the pictures in the front of the tank for starts?

PostPosted: Mon Sep 19, 2005 7:17 am
by cam722
Anything you put in your turtle tank that can be eaten .. more than likely .. will be eaten. Make the choice of plants based on the fact that if you get real plants, they're considered food. Other than that, it doesn't really matter if they are real or fake.

PostPosted: Mon Sep 19, 2005 1:17 pm
by marisa
I use a combination of fake and real plants. They get to know the difference pretty quickly. They rest on or hide in the fake plants and eat the real ones (I don't put a lot in at one time--they get eaten or the turts make an mess of them). :) If you plan to use fake plants, it's better not to use ones with really small leaves that your turtles could try to eat if one falls off--it could be accidently ingested.

PostPosted: Wed Sep 21, 2005 8:10 am
by tarrish
The pictures in the back are of Kate and Sawyer from Lost. That's what I named them, so that's why the pictures are there.

PostPosted: Wed Sep 21, 2005 8:31 am
by sonyj
Funny, I love Lost.... just didn't recognize the pics though. :) 8)

PostPosted: Wed Sep 21, 2005 11:16 am
by Jen182
lol. I was like "wow, that girl really looks like Kate." And then I saw the one of Sawyer and I was like...ohhhh.

New season starts tonight! Wooo!

PostPosted: Wed Sep 21, 2005 1:06 pm
by steve
those pics may be very distracting to baby res, i would use a solid color background.