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where do i start,

I am currently designing a basking area for my RES's. I have all the dimensions for the area and i am ready to build for my new tank. The ramp that they will use will be perspex but i don't know what to cover it with to let them have grip.
I intend to use a standing lamp with an overhead so that I can place a bulb in for basking.
Should I have another light directed into the water as it will be an open top tank.
Last one...................... is it 10gallons volume for each inch or 10gallons water.

cheers

Ten gallons of tank per inch of shell length. How big a tank is it and how big are your turtles?

For traction on the ramp, you could use something like the plastic gripper liner you'd use on shelves. I've siliconed plastic strips to ramps, and I've seen pics of ramps that have had stones siliconed to them for traction.

You'll have a floor light over the basking area for a heat source? Your turtle will also need a UVB light positioned over the basking area. Whethr or not you have another light directed over the water would, I think, depend on how bright the light is with the other two lights. For my bigger tanks, I do have another light for brightness.

If you look in the Photo Gallery, you might get some other ideas for the basking area.

sorry for the thread hijack but didn't want to start a new thread since the topic is still related but i have a newbie question. do you put plexiglass in the oven for a bit to make it flexible so u can bend the ramp? if so, how long do u heat it for and at what temp? i need to make a new basking platform and am looking at all the great ideas on this board

You only want to heat up the section that you want to bend. I'm not sure if putting the entire piece in the oven is a good idea or not. You need to heat the plexiglass up to about 200 degrees before it will begin to bend but it's a good idea if you can get some kind of a heat gun (like they use for removing old paint) or a propane torch if you're very very careful. You need to keep applying the heat to the area you want to bend and slowly apply pressure at the same time, but you have to be very careful not to overheat it or you can ruin the plexiglass. GreyGoose has a thread somewhere about how he made his ramp using this method. I did it too with a blow torch and ruined my first piece, but the second one came out close to perfect.

Plexiglass in the oven is a bad idea. It's something akin to a cd in the microwave. Only without the cool fireworks show. You'll end up ruining your oven. You may want to try boiling water and running hot water over the section you want to bend, carefully because if its not hot enough, it will just break. For the record, I've never done the cd in the microwave thing. My older brother does it with those free cd's you get in the mail. I have only watched, and I seriously don't recommend it, it smells really bad and that smell is hard to get out of the microwave.

For traction, you could try a silicone sand mixture, make a kind of sandpaper. That and I was at the pet store yesterday and I thought I saw that grippy liner stuff you see on the acrylic ramps. You could try looking online.