Posted: Tue Jan 19, 2010 2:11 am
For a turtle that big... Anywhere from a 30 to 55 gallon tank with suffice. If you get a 55 gallon, keep it either a third or halfway full, and definitely provide some big plants, or a hammock, or even your palm tree rock, for the little one to hang onto and rest. Turtles this size lack coordination and are clumsy.
Gravel has to go. Busted internal organs are no picnic.
For a substrate, the best I've found is actually river rocks, and those transparent glass ones that are usually bigger than an adult turtle's head. I take them out each time I clean my tank, which only takes five minutes. I rinse them in hot water, and sucking up the dirt really only takes me I'd say 15 minutes... give or take. It actually took me over an hour to clean the tank when I left the rocks in there, and I still didn't get the dirt out! (I use a gravel vac to suck up the dirt).
For filter... The cheap ones are the Fluval and the Cascade. They come in different varieties. You base the GPH (gallons per hour) of a filter on how many gallons in your tank. If you have a 50 gallon, you want something which has a GPH of double or three times that, in other words, 100 to 150 GPH.
The 10 gallons per inch of turtle will make you nuts if you go by it exactly as your turtle grows. My friend, who's turtle was put in a new 40 gallon, grew an inch several months later, so she bought a 50 gallon. Then the turtle grew another inch, so she bought a 60 gallon. She basically had bought three tanks in one year, which is just ridiculous. I told her to stop it. The point is, a 5 inch turtle by itself is fine in a 40 gallon, a 9 inch turtle is fine in an 80 gallon. If a turtle can turn around completely, swim back and forth a fair distance, and isn't taller than the water level, then it's fine.
Phryne - Japanese bobtail, 11 y.o.
Hurricane - RES, approx. 19 y.o., 7.00in. long
Typhoon - RES hybrid, approx. 19 y.o., 8 in. long
Sadie - RES, approx. 30+ y.o., 11.5in. long
Sophie - Colombian red tail boa, 15 y.o., 5 ft. long
