redearslider.com

Well, we bought our 16 year old daughter a RES after she hounded us for months.. not 3 week later, i had moved Sir Bruce into my office and assumed care of the bloke.

I am amazed at how entertaining this guy is and quite suprized at how attached I have become to him. We recently managed to upgrade him from his starter tank (a 20long - he was WAY to big for that tank!) to a 40 long. Since then, about 3 weeks ago, he has been, as best we can tell, very happy - he will bask for a good 6-7 hours at a shot, and gets pretty hyper when the wife or I approach his tank.

Today, we found us a hatchling - Ziggy is about 1 1/2", and even though he appears to have a busted leg ,seems to be adapting well to his new home - (Bruces old tank). I think Ziggy is a bit too small to swim with Bruce unsupervised, but we will see how that goes.

anyway - the current setup we have for Sir Bruce is pertty plain - a few rocks, small basking platform (he is almost bigger than it) and a new pump.

I have been thinking about building a custom 125g tank, simply because I know I cant afford to buy one that large - even a used one - and I got to thinking about all the decorations and other things I see in tanks.

When we got Sir Bruce, the kid at Pet Smart (yeah, I know- they are total idiots about turtles) convinced me we needed the "river rock" as a substrate. Within days, the tank smelled like a damn sewer. Once I got rid of the rocks (after attempting to totally drain/clean the tank for 2 weeks) its been REALLY easy to keep up with the cleaning - so, there is nothing on the bottom of the tank except a few large rocks. Is that bad?

Do we need to add some of those tank decorations or plants or stuff? I dont know if he needs the extra stimulation, or what, but I also dont want to deprive him.

back to the tank build - any advice? My son in law works for a local glass company, and thinks he can get me some glass pretty cheap. We have talked about a couple 5'long, 2' tall sheets (1/8" thick) for the long side, and a couple of 2'x2' sheets for the sides. I saw a video somewhere on how to build it, but wanted to see if anyone else had any tips, or advice, etc..

Here are my boys -
Ziggy -
Sir Bruce -

Welcome to the site, here's a thread that talks about building a tank from scratch. Maybe the original poster can help you more


viewtopic.php?f=6&t=29625

Thanks for the link. Ill give it a read.

cute turts! I know, tanks are expensive. My female is now in a 90 gallon tank and it took me a year to save up for that. I would love to upgrade her at some point. If you build one from scratch can you post pics? Would love to see it.

Will do. Wife and I decided to spoil the boys today. I pulled out Bruce's old tank and set it up next to the big one, and we bought some decorations and a new doc for Bruce. He seems to be pretty happy. We have even started talking about saving up for a Fluval.

Hi, welcome to the site! My brother built my custom 125 gallon (60x24x20) and we had to use 3/8" glass.

do you remember where he got the build instructions?

Your guys are really cute.

For substrate I highly recommend sand. Turtles love to play in it, it looks great and is easy to maintain. There is a sand faq in the habitat section of the forums that lets you know everything you need to do to prepare the sand and add it.

Beltic wrote:do you remember where he got the build instructions?

Yes, from me. I drew up the plans, though I don't know where they are now. The main thing is to account for the thickness of the seams (we used toothpicks as spacers).