Habitat - Indoor :: Stabilizing the Turtle Dock.

[Andrew7769]

how big of a tank do u have them in? it should be pretty big for that many turts... have you considered 2 basking areas? because if u have 4 or 5 turts that dock no matter how much u reenforce it will not phisicly hold that many

[xsavingsaturdayx]

It is important for them to completely dry off (shell and plastron) im not exactly sure what can happen if they go without drying off for too long.But i know that its not pretty let alone healthy.

[Pizza]

Yeah, I'm planning on building my own dock (probably of PVC Piping).

And right now their current enclosure is too small I know that, at 90G, I plan on getting a larger tank (or several smaller) in the next few months, if I can sum up the $$$, or I'll just get a big tub of some sort. The turtles like to be together though, that's for sure, they all huddle up together.

Right now though, the two mid-sized females take turns basking, one goes on for a few hours, and the moment it gets off, within five minutes, the other is on the dock basking. They even watch one another for the moment they leave, the other swoops in. Sometimes one doesn't notice the other on, and begins climbing on, when it sees the tail of the other on the dock, it retreats back into the water, they're quite clever.

[xsavingsaturdayx]

Well thats cool as long as your planning to upgrade in the future that is fine,just try to do it as soon as you possibly can.Maybe you can build them an above basking platform,think about..it will give them more swimming space since theyre tank is too small and you can make the platform however big you want it to be.

[CrossKnight]

sorry, my post must have been confusing, I ment putting a rock on the dock to make it sink down a little.

And I think it is important for the turtles to completly dry off, once I posted about algae and someone told me that the turtles completly drying off not only helps harden their shells but prevents algae from growing on them.

and might I say you have some pretty big turtles, how old are they?? Mine are only about 3 months old.

[Pizza]

I see now, well I think it's going to be hard to find such a rock, since my large sized dock can hardly hold one turtle, I would need to find a rock that is heavy enough, and won't take up too much space. I would also need to find one heavy enough so my turtles can't knock it off (they're very strong, you;d be surprised), and one that won't completely sink the dock.

Well from the previous owner, he said that two of them he has had since they were hatchlings, so 15+ years old he said, the other two he adopted several years ago, so they're 8+.