Habitat - Indoor :: Help with Basking Platform

[Snatcherpuss]

hey guys I made an attempt at making my own basking platform...I used PVC pipe for the legs and a sheet of plastic for the actual platform. I covered the plastic with terranium liner you can buy at any pet store.

Only thing is, the heat from my basking light has de-formed the plastic sheet as you can see in the pic below....What should I use for the platform and how can I secure it to the PVC pipe?

[Love of Animals]

You can use egg crate (light diffuser) found in the lighting section of hardware stores. Use zip ties to secure. Light diffuser can also be heated to be bent into shape. It would have to be a high heat though. What is the temp of your basking are?

[BRuTAL_HiTMAN_]

what wattage and how close is your heating lamp to the plastic? and +1 for love of animals, what's the temp of the basking area? you can secure egg crate to the PVC using zip ties. but im not sure of the layout, the egg crate could raise your platform too high if you don't do it right.

[Snatcherpuss]

Thanks for the advice guys...its a zoo med 75w bulb approx 6 inches from the platform. Is that too close?....if the egg crate makes it too high I can cut the PVC pipe to make it lower

[BRuTAL_HiTMAN_]

it could be... could you get us a temperature reading on the basking platform and we'd know for certain?

[Snatcherpuss]

I dont have a thermometer in the basking area yet (need to pick one up). I just went ahead and made a new one with some light diffuser panel I got at home depot. I fused the ramp to it with a soldering iron. we'll see how this works out.








I just moved him into a 40G breeder about 2 weeks ago. I finally ordered a rena xp3 filter yesterday so waiting for that to get here this week

[BRuTAL_HiTMAN_]

it looks nice. does that plastic soldering job seem pretty strong? it looks like a good solid melt to me

[Love of Animals]

Looks good!

[Snatcherpuss]

it looks nice. does that plastic soldering job seem pretty strong? it looks like a good solid melt to me

It seems pretty strong to me. I pushed on it a few times with what I thought would be more weight than the turtle would ever put on it and it seemed fine. I took my time and made sure I melted together as much as I could... I was considering reinforcing it just to be safe but not sure how to go about doing that.

[Snatcherpuss]

Looks good!

Thank you!

[BRuTAL_HiTMAN_]

if you want to reinforce it, there are a couple things you could try. you could try zip ties and make them as tight as you possibly can. or, you could cut the top PVC pipes around a long the sides in half, cut out a little extra to fit in a T-bracket on each side, run 2 PVC pieces out of the T's and join them in the middle with another T. so basically your platform would look more like an H from a top view, and a T bracket joining them. and THEN, finally, run a piece of PVC from that last T bracket to underneath the ramp, and have it hit the ramp form underneath. feel free to even rotate pipe downwards towards the water to hit the ramp lower to get it better support.

if you want to add a little extra stability, after you run the pipe to the ramp's undearneath, put another T on the end, with maybe a couple of inches of pipe on each side to give the ramp better contact points with the pipe so it has more support and can help balance the ramp as well while it's being climbed.

let me know if that doesn't make sense and you want drawings, it's a lot simpler than i made it sound.

but if you think the ramp is solid enough feel free to completely disregard everything i just said haha