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Posted by kiwiturtle on April 13, 2003 at 19:57:53:
In Reply to: Re: some pix posted by periwinklewalnut on April 13, 2003 at 16:46:19:
Thanks for the complements! :-)
Actually my pictures can be a little misleading---they show various tank settings that I've adopted over the past 4 weeks. I used to have gravel, river pebbles, big rocks and various household containers for basking. But they are kind of hard to clean and take up tank space so I've stopped using them. Now my tank is actually quite artificial looking with little decoration. The top 2 pictures of the panel were taken at the current setting.
Now they're in about 5-6 inches of water (in a 10-G tank; a bit small I know), with a small internal filter that I'll soon replace with a Fluval 2 plus, 1 small plastic plant, 1 underwater cave and a homemade floating basking area + ramp attached to the tank with suction cups(similar idea as the commercial turtle ramps). I'll go into some of these in more detail.
The underwater cave is basicallly a plastic box (non-see-through; 3"x2"x4"), inverted, and with one side cut open as the cave "entrance". They don't use it too often, except when they get startled (i.e. when people walk into the room) then they would hide in there for less than a minute. I figure it makes them feel safer.
I can try to explain how I made the basking platform+ramp but without a picture it's hard. I'll let you know when I get a good picture of it. The top right picture that I posted shows only the ramp, and you can see it's quite easy for them to climb to the top where the basking area is. The advantage of a basking platform that's anchored by suction cups at the water surface is that no tank space is wasted for creating a basking area.
I feed them outside the tank since my filter is not powerful enough to remove all the waste, but I occassionally float some veggies in the tank for them to nibble. I used to have problems with veggies drawn to the filter water intake and blocking it. Now I attach veggies to one end of a fishing line and hang it from the top of the tank so that the veggies are at the water surface. Sort of like I'm trying to "fish" the turtles with the veggies as the bait. :P This way it's easier for the turts to eat them and the veggies don't clog up the filter water intake. And because I only feed them once a day, they get hungry between meals and don't mind eating veggies at all. :-)
Hope this helps,
Kiwi
