Habitat - Outdoor :: My turtle pond project. pics/blog

[Carl]

I'm not sure how you can tell if they are or not... I think they are. They are quite big and have not gown much that I can tell over the last few years. They are at least 11-12 years old.

Our goldfish had babies already! lots of little baby fish swimming around in the shallow water and hiding under rocks.

[untsmurf]

That is gorgeous! you guys did a great job!

[Linus]

Great Pond! How many gallons is it and what type of Filter?

[Terryo]

Beautiful.....lucky turts. Keep those pictures coming.

[RESnTX]

Your turtle pond turned out beautiful!

[mat012]

Keep posting pics - it is really beautiful. Cant wait to see the plants, etc. I will have to save his pic in case we ever do a pond. It really is lovely!

[itzrasaqboy]

very cool pond

[Carl]

Great Pond! How many gallons is it and what type of Filter?

Thanks to you all for the compliments.

There are some pictures of the filter in the start of my thread. It is just an upflow "skippy" type filter with a shelf of many nylon scubber pads. Now I call it the arrowhead filter, because the arrowhead plant has taken over. I expect the entire filter to be taken up with that plant by next spring as it is growing like mad. We have an Oase skimmer with pondmaster 1800 and then another 1000 gph sub pump from the bottom of the pond.

I don't know how many gallons we ended up with. But it is about 12 feet long and 7 feet wide at the widest part, and at least 3 feet deep. maybe 1500 gallons? and then there is 150 gallons in the arrowhead filter.

Plants with our turts dont last long. floating or underwater plants= forget it. The best way to try and establish some marginal plants is by making a "fire ring" with rocks around the plant to try and keep them away. I brought home a $15 black leaf taro and came back 20 mintues later to find it almost completely consumed by our two monsters.

we are going to continue to add some plants (hopefully) and finsih things up in time. (is it ever finished?) but for now it is working and functional as a home for our two. We plan on leaving them in there year round as we have had success doing this before just with large containers.

By the way, can anyone direct me to the poisonous plant list of plants?

[steve]

Anapsid - Harmful & Poisonous Plants
http://www.anapsid.org/resources/plants-ag.html
http://www.anapsid.org/resources/plants-hn.html
http://www.anapsid.org/resources/plants-oz.html

[Carl]

YIKES! looks like that black taro or Colocasia is listed as bad. They ate almost the entire thing! I wish the list had some kind of rating as to how bad the plant is for them. All it says is "mouth irritated by plant raphides" So I assume they will live, but with irrated mouths for a while.

thank you for the links.

[steve]

A rating list would be great, but I think it would be very difficult to organize. I try to keep things within 4 categories and there are so many borderline factors to deal with. Either way, variety is probably the most important thing to consider.

[Carl]

Thought I would post an update: The turtles started hibernating on the bottom of the pond since mid december. I'm going to use their sleepy time to try and establish some more plants around the pond. Also on the agenda before spring hits is a good filter cleaning and addition of some extra filter media in the "skippy" filter.

haha funny, I just was reading some of my first posts and originally we thought the pond would be 300-500 gallons... and in the end, I think it is more like 1200-1500 gallons here is the latest pics:

[Linus]

Just incredible and natural!

[steve]

I agree with sfmmfreak! That's just beautiful!

[Terryo]

My neighbor just put in a pond this summer and it cost her $8,000 to do it professionally, and it isn't half as beautiful as yours. I wouldn't even show her your pictures...she'd go nuts. This last picture is just amazing. I love that waterfall.