Habitat - Indoor :: Plz Help Me With My 1 1/2' Baby Turtle Brand New Tank Setup

[SkyeHack]

Update: He has become more active Little by little I noticed he made his way around. it makes me feel better to know that he is ok just getting use to his surroundings
As far as our filter goes, we got another filter as well as the rock filter now. We decided to keep the rock filter because he/she enjoys climbing it. As for the rocks at the bottom of the tank we will be removing those when we clean his tank which should be soon. Right now my next purchase is going to be a better heater, the one we purchased is CRAP!!! I think im going to go head and get the Marineland Visi-Therm Stealth heater. Im wondering now if that might be the reason for why he isnt exploring as much...hope it fixes the problem.

My next question to you guys would be, how long do you keep the basking light on? We have been leaving it on day and night because we noticed the water temps get lower during the evening....again we are hoping the new heater corrects this problem. But in what time increments do you guys recommend leaving it on?

[EmperorTunaFish]

10-12 hours of ontime is good. If you're worried about timing you can get a light timer from a hardware store. UVB bulbs need to be replaced every 6ish months.

[untsmurf]

ETF is correct. Some people alter their light cycles with the seasons (10 hours for winter, 12 for spring/summer) but that's not required. Mine are on a timer. They come on around 1030am and stay on for twelve hours.

I highly recommend getting a timer. It makes life much easier for you and the turtle, because then the turtle has no chances of stressing out because their lights were forgotten one morning. You can go to target or walmart and get a timer for about $4 I think. And we plug in a mini-extension cord:



to the timer so that both lights are plugged into one time instead of having to buy two. If you don't have it around the house already, you can get one of those at target/wal-mart as well. They should be in the same section as the timers.