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Posted by nathana on April 17, 2003 at 11:42:42:
In Reply to: Re: Lets not lose sight of what Nathan said posted by Kanuck on April 17, 2003 at 10:17:20:
Just out of curiosity, do you see a 100 gallon tank as a large setup for a pair or trio of spotteds? My wife has a cage for her bearded dragons, two half grown ones. The cage is 8'x2.5'x2.5'. I still think it's just too small, even though as far as space in my house, it's quite a large thing. I suppose it's just a personal opinion call on wether a cage is large or small.
How big of a land area is in your tanks? I never would have thought much of it before keeping aquatics and woods and spotteds outdoors (well... woods I did know used a lot of land), but while the baskers will hang out close to water, rarely wandering on the land, the spotteds use the land as much as the woods. I haven't seen a spotted eat on land, and indeed I don't even know if its possible for them, but I do see them forage, catch or find things, and drag them to the water to eat. I don't even put food in their water for them any more, just in a dish by the side when they are in their current pen.
The new pen with very large pond (current one is a huge plastic thing I empty and drain weekly) will have plenty of things in the water and I'll probably keep land and water stocked, and put food in both besides. I'm sure they'll find it both places.
Do you have any photos of your tanks?
http://www.aileo.com/PhotoAlbum.cfm?vMember=2&vAlbum=110
is the address of my wife's photo album of our turtles and some pen shots and things are in there.
aileo.com/aileona/ is a site we built but don't maintain very often with some info (no spotted info though, just aquatic, woods, and boxies).
I love looking at attractively set up aquariums. I'm debating wether or not to set up a 300 gallon in the house as a large room divider. I do occasionally bring animals in for winter, and would likely use it for housing young (I keep animals inside the first year of their life, then they go outdoors). I've had a lot of luck combining a UGF with other filtration to keep very high water quality with little maintenance.
Currently I won't keep any species I can't put outdoors year round, partially because I just am that way, and partially because while it's probably just as expensive to build the pens/ponds and set everything up and plant them and such, the maintenance cost and time is less after that, and I have a LOT of animals. I might consider a tropical species if I had the 300 gallon, but I haven't really seen any but one that caught my eye. The one that did was like a rough spotted turtle from somewhere in vietnam or nearby. It was amazing now much like a spotted it looked, but with a rough textured shell like a wood turtle would have. I'm sorry I didn't purchase them when I had the chance.
Anyway, I'd like to hear more about how you maintain your setups. Do you hibernate your spotteds? I've heard from folks who tried them outdoors year round in florida, where they couldn't get a cold spell, that they tapered off in their egg production and became sporatic and not seasonal with individual eggs here and there after 5 years, so that they were not producing in any useful capacity by ten years, but were otherwise healthy animals.
