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Hi!
I am turning my 12,500 swimming pool into a pond habitat. The majority of the pool is three foot deep but about a fourth of it is 6ft deep. The top step of the pool is only submerged 5 inches. I live in Jacksonville, FL where we get lots of heat but some freezing nights in the winter. The pond gets full sun from about 11am on when the shade from a neighbor's tree moves into his yard. Obviously the pool never freezes.

So far the pond will be shared with 8 gold fish, 2 Plecos, lots frogs and tons of tadpoles. I had a friend offer me 2 red ear sliders that are outgrowing the habitats she can provide. I have looked on line but I can't find any resource that says these turtles like deep water ponds; they just say "deep enough". Well how deep is "deep enough" and how deep is "too deep". I plan on floating driftwood on the pond for frogs and turtles to sun themselves on. I did find their preferred plants to eat in time to incorporate those into the plant part of this pond equation.

I was wondering if anyone had tried red ear sliders in a deep water pond and if so could you please share any lessons you learned in the process? If not, has anyone tried other turtles from the SE USA in deep water ponds and again, could you please share any lessons learned?

Thanks in advance for any guidance you can provide.

look at the a pond for timmy thread. There was a pool used for a bunch of res there.

Cool beans! Thanks for the reference!

Ok, scanned through the recommended thread and took away a couple of things from it. Yes, red ear sliders like deep water ponds. No, I don't know enough about caring for turtles properly. I am not going to drain the pool in the winter so I need to make sure what I put in there can survive Jacksonville, FL winters because the pool will be too large to heat. Not sure if red ear sliders are up to that or not. Finally, that woman deserves a gold metal for all she does for her pond pets! I do dog rescue so I love my animals too but wowser I don't know if I have all that in me! I want to make sure I make the right decisions on the new family members in the pond! Any guidance would be greatly appreciated.

Almost any species of native turtle can live in a pool in fl year round. Off hand, the only species I could think of that wouldn't be good are bog turtles, spotted turtles, wood turtles, blandings turtles, and anything that lives strictly on land. Anything else would be fine, so long as you've provided some lots for basking, and plenty of large sunken objects to hide and rest on/in

Ok great! Didn't know about the underwater hiding zones. We are putting in 36"L x 15"W x20"H plastic shelving units to hold the plants on the top shelves. We had planned on arranging rocks on the bottom shelves for the plecos to hide and nest in. Would this work for the turtles as well? Is there something specific I should incorporate into the bottom shelves to make it work for turtles? I am trying to not do anything that isn't reversible for the next owner when the house is sold down the road so I don't want to put rocks directly on the marcite. I don't have any plans to sell but I am not a spring chicken and my kids will have to deal with that someday.

I would sink large ceramic pots filled with gravel and plant water lilies and mosaic plants and floating water lettuce for the turtle to munch on. To keep bugs and mosquito away you can keep native fishes as long as they are larger than the turtles. Wish I had a spare pool

A huge piece of driftwood would be great. Honestly, you have so many options... tons of vegetation, beach areas, etc. I think someone else posted pics of a converted pool a couple of years ago...

Also check the Florida State laws on Red Eared Sliders - they are restricted in the state and have additional requirements to keep RES outside.

can you please post a pic of your converted pool once you have done working on it? Just curious how it looks like.