General Care Discussion :: water temp question, need Ideas for basking area

[4bubbas05]

I need to know what is the lowest comfortable temp for res? I tried to add an apple snail to the tank and it was unhappy and when I took it back they told me the water was too warm for a snail but I really wanted one, I read a while back that someone on this site has an applesnail with their res. I know the water cant get to cool because one of my turtles has stopped eating before when she was too cold, we have our temp at about 78 degrees. Also does anyone have any ideas for a basking area, our turtles are getting too big for a large turtle dock and our experience with river rock is the rock turns green in a short amount of time. Does anyone have anything living in same tank as res?

[sonyj]

78 degrees is what your temp needs to be for hatchlings (under a year old). Older turtles can have a water temp of 72-75 degrees.

I currently have two snails (golden mystery) in the tank with Koopa, but if I had it to do over I wouldn't have got them to begin with. They have really added to the waste load at the bottom of the tank. The only thing they've been helpful with is eating the bits of lettuce that float around the waters edge at the top of the tank.

[4bubbas05]

do you have any ideas for a basking area? we dont buy mystery snails anymore because the turts just eat them and they are not cheap.

[sonyj]

There are tons of ideas for basking areas in the photo gallery. Spookster has a good homemade one. If you'll look up his posts, he has a link to pics at the bottom in his signature.