Habitat - Indoor :: New Tank and ABTA - Almost done

[Mimi2cas]

Pictures of ABTA
Exterior with Fake Ivy over doors

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Yertle Basking from Above

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Peeking through the Ivy at Yertle

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I put the Ivy up trying to give Yertle a sense of security, he still tends to fling himself back into the water at the slightest thing, he is doing better with the ivy, but as you can see from the pictures he watches everything very closely when basking.

[Mimi2cas]

Interior Shots from the water end of the ABTA

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Yertle swimming by his Ramp

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I need to drill a couple of holes in the bottom of the cork and run the zip tie under it around the acrylic, but I don't want to tweak Yertle out anymore for now so until I set him up in the 55 G in a couple of weeks, so I am going to leave it the way it is for now. The only problem I am having right now is keeping the ABTA up to temp due to the temperature fluctuations we get this time of year, I am going to put a towel over the water end and see how it does that way and maybe some foil over the exposed areas around the lights to try and keep the heat in. Please let me know what you think..Thanks

[steve]

Looks terrific! Are you saying it's getting too cold? What are you using to measure the basking temps?

[Mimi2cas]

I have a reptile thermometer that sticks to the inside wall. At night with the red heat lamp on it is only getting to about 80, once his daytime lights come on it gets to just over 90 in the early part of the day. Once it gets a little warmer it reaches 95%. We are having some weird temperature fluctuations, the last couple of days it has been in the 70's for the rest of the week it will get back down to the 50's. I had turned my heater off which is causing the house to get down to about 65 in his area. I will be turning it back on tonight as the highs will only be in the 30's again. As long as the temp in his room stays about 70 degrees his basking area is 95 running the Mega ray and a daylight heat bulb. I think once the temps start staying above 55 at night it will be okay again. I need to get my temperature gun out and really check his basking area now that I think about it. Once I put the towel over the water end the temp read this today. Not sure how accurate these are.

This is the thermometer:

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[ljapa]

I bet your temps are much better than you suspect. You've got a thermometer right next to the plexiglass with an open top. Those rocks underneath the heat source are much hotter and will hold that heat. I'd try laying the thermometer on the basking area and seeing what you get.

I don't think you need the night heat lamp. I expect your RES sleeps in the water, and when it comes up for air, it's ok if it breathes cooler air.

Think about a wild turtle in a pond. Right now, just SE of Chicago at 9:30 at night, it's a muggy 75. A week ago, though it was dropping into the 50's. I walk my dog near a pond that has basking RES and painted turtles. They were basking on those days where the nights were cool because at night, the water was keeping their body temp warm enough.

[Mimi2cas]

I did find my temperature gun and checked the area. The air is around 90 and the rocks were around 100 degrees. So not as bad as I thought. I only put the night heat lamp in because he will get out and lay under it and dry off. On weekends he tends to stay in the water more as there is more activity in the house than during the week, so it does give him a chance to dry out.

His shell is still not in the greatest shape, it looks like he has lots of unshed scutes. It is not soft or infected or anything like that. As soon as he relaxes a little bit I am going to give him a cleaning again. He does like the feel of the toothbrush on his shell even if he does not like being picked up! He is shedding the scutes slowly, and I am feeding him the jello shots that were posted on this site as being good for the shell. So it will just take time, but I worry that he does not bask enough sometimes.

My local community center has a Red eared slider and his shell is beautiful. Even from pictures I did not know they really looked the way Timmy the Turtle does, so that is my goal to get Yertle's shell as healthy as Timmy's. I am not Yertles first home. I know that while they did take good care of him, they did not do any in-depth research. He was in a 20g with little water and was only fed pellets and goldfish. So not the greatest diet. Hopefully as he gets used to the ABTA he will bask more. I got a 100 watt Megaray bulb to provide the UVA/UVB he needs, much better than the reptile bulbs I was using and it should last for 6000 hours which is a little over a year.

[ljapa]

I tried a number of different lights and am very happy with my MegaRay.