Photo Gallery :: New Owner, new habitat w/ pictures

[cYn]

Hey guys. I'm pretty new here and pretty new to turtle caring. I justed wanted to share with you my turtles habitat. I bought these turtles illegaly cause they were just under 2 inches. I initially bought it for fun because my girl friend thought they were the cutest things on earth. They were 6 bucks each so I bought three. At first, they lived in a 12 inch bowl in shallow water for about a week. I then found a 10 gallon tank at walmart for only 13 bucks so I bought that and they love the space to swim. After another two weeks, my aunt and uncle gave up their 40 gal tank to me because caring for fish was way too hard for them. In my 40 gal tank, I have the fluval 4 plus, as per recommendation in the stickied filtration thread, a cork bark for basking, and a zilla tropical UVB bulb. I also planted some live plants in there hoping that they can condition the water once they sprout. Any ways, tell me what you guys think. I gained a lot of knowledge from this forum so being an owner for about three weeks, I think I'm doing good as a starter. Here are the pictures from their first habitat till now.

[rsour24]

looks good but id lose the small pebbles on the bottom, they may try to eat them and could die, just usebigger stones

[BullDog]

Great improvements! Very nice tank too!
Like rsour said, just make sure all the pebbles are bigger than their head (and keep on top of small pebbles as they grow).

[aero]

Wow I really like your new tank!

[Ankit]

thats in fact a very cute and colorful tank

[novroz]

great tank. I will never put Kame n Kroten's tank in here

[Moose]

Great tank cYn, I concurr with all the above, 86 the gravel, try river rock, and you were very brave to put the tank above your laptop lol

[cYn]

Thanks for all of your comments. The gravel is actually 1.5 times bigger than the turtle's head so I'm not so worried about it. I'm planning to get rid of the gravel in the future and lay some foam (or water proof) material as the bottom layer.

Yes it was pretty ridiculous to have the tank above my laptop before, but I'm glad they are out of my room and into the living room because the heater lamp was making ME bask.

[gwennie]

What kind of bulbs are those? They look like they're really close to the basking area...there are some risks associated with having your UVA/B light that close to basking turtles.

[cYn]

I have no clue on the rating of those UVB but its the Zilla 25 Tropical UVB bulb. They are attached to a clamp lamp so I have adjusted them further away.