blue print for turtle habitat

[mshill90]

Ok, so I started out with a small 6" DBT, and he's been happily living in a 40 gallon long tank.

I then acquired a 7" female DBT, and although she is happy as well in the 40 gallon, I know they are cramped.

I was originally set on just having 1, but I don't think that's possible! haha.

So this is my set up idea that I will have put together within the week- the only thing to finish completing is the filtering idea.

The enclosure is going to be the size of a piece of plywood. 4'x8'.

• The dark gray box is the 110 gallon stock tank.
• The bright green is going to be planted grass.
• Orange will be terra cotta pots in which will have large plants to give it more of a forestry look.
• The olive green will be a nesting spot.
• The light gray is going to be slate tiles (yellow spots) being the basking lights suspended from the ceiling.
• The brown will be mulch/pea gravel? Haven't decided which would be best.
• The maroon is going to be the water fountain where the water will return back into the tank from the filter.
• The brighter blue will be the UVB lights. I have hydroponic lights that I originally used on my koi when we first started with their indoor tanks. So it mimics natural sunlight.

I will also be adding a large piece of driftwood in the tank, as well as growing some water lettuce in there.

I was thinking about adding some minnows (after they are qt'ed) just do they have something to keep them busy.

What so you think? Oh, and the plywood will have rubber over it so that the grass can be watered without warping the plywood.

 

[paul112]

That's a huge enclosure for 2 DBTs, but not a bad thing. Personally, I wouldn't expect them to use that much land space, and speaking from experience (I have a 10x2x3ft Wood Turtle enclosure with similar features), grass does not work. I used hard ryegrass lawn seed, and it grows quick, looks great, then gets too long, tangled, wilts, rots, moulds and attracts a whole load of scarid flies. I wish it worked, but I'd advise against it.

Personally, I'd use plywood to build an extension onto one end of the stock tank, with a small land area/nesting box. If you want to go larger, just use an even bigger stock tank as the main structure, because I think with the above layout, you're going to have a lot of wasted space.

I made a quick mock-up diagram of what I mean, you could use a large log or piece of driftwood to act as a ramp, and have the lights positoned above it so that it doubles up as a basking platform

Keep us posted with pics and such!
Paul

 

[mshill90]

Well, since I posted this, I have now made plans to pick up a Russian Tort, so I am going to be building a dual layer set up- with my DBTs on the bottom with their tank, and the russian above with her set up.

So, the tank set up will be cut down a bit smaller. The largest stock tank other than the 300 is my 110, and being indoors, that's all I can fit.