I am currently taking care of my girlfriends red ear slider, Raphael, while she is at college. She has had Raph for about six years and is currently in a 35 gal tank. I feel that she needs to be placed in a bigger tank now, however, seeing as she has gotten bigger since coming under my care and would like to move her into a 55 gal that I have as well as upgrade her filtration. Problem being, she's too big for her current basking platform and that I fear that moving her into the bigger tank will give her "too much" swimming area. I'm kinda new to this kind of method but I've been trying to build her one by taking about half the tank and sealing in some lengths of plastic to create a basking/feeding area that is a little bit apart from the swimming area, I'll place photo's at the end. Long story short, it hasn't been easy to get it working the way I have imagined. Further more I'm not even sure if the smooth plastic will be a good idea. I've gone to all of my local pet stores and find them to be rather useless.
My new idea for the tank is to get a bigger basking platform along with a floating turtle log. Though it feels a bit better to have both the stationary and free floating platforms, I still feel as if Raph will have "too much" swimming space if that's possible. I try and not change her environment too much with her being about six years old and all, and all she normally has is some rocks on the bottom of the tank and her platform. She doesn't eat live food so any and all suggestions on what to do will be very grateful.
Thank you for putting up with this long winded explanations and ramblings. If you have further questions I'll do my best to answer them to the fullest extent of my knowledge.
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