Habitat - Indoor :: Need some ideas.

[Ranger The Red Ear Slider]

Ranger's ATBA is showing its age and it's time to redo it. I currently have a peice of eggcrate as the floor base, eggcrate ramp, and glass surrounding it. Im wanting to go with something stronger then eggcrate as the base to hold up for much longer. Im thinking of keeping the glass clean it up and reuse it. I was looking at some setups and thinking of doing a tile floor. Hopefully find one the exaxt size I need but Ill have to look into that. Then get a peice of acylic glue about 3-4 inches on the tile and heat bend the rest into the water as a ramp. My only concern is the edges of the tile and acylic, Are they dull enough to no hurt ranger? Or would I have to sand them down smooth? Also other ideas would be awesome.

[Tdgosu]

I'm using slate tile as my base and it's great. I bought a square foot and had them cut it down to the sizes I wanted. Grabbed a piece of 60 grit sand paper and smoothed down the edges. Wasn't hard, took like 5 minutes to smooth the couple of pieces i wanted to use. Only downside is the plastron takes a bit longer to dry because air can't get to it as easily.

Also, choose your tile pieces wisely, I saw a couple that had what looked like iron that was rusting, but I could have been mistaken.

[mantis]

here is what i did. the whole thing is braced with half inch pvc. the ramp is a zoo med floating dock that o drilled to run zip ties in tthe pvc. the tile i used is a rough rock texture. the ramp works great and the tile heats up for added warmth and my guy love it. hope it helps

[Ranger The Red Ear Slider]

Thanks guys. And I'll make sure to stay away from the rust tiles! I was thinking of putting fake grass over the tile to make it soft. I have a old zoomed dock can you post a pic of that?

[Ranger The Red Ear Slider]

Looking at homedepot there's different kinds of tile. Ceramic tile, porcelain tile, and natrual rock tile. Which one is best?

[Kansasslider]

You can use indoor outdoor carpet to make its soft but then you would be covering up the tile so why don't you just use Plexiglas and not worry about the tile ? just me thinking !

[mantis]

here is a couple of pics of the dock and ramp

[Kansasslider]

Plexi it ?Have you seen my atba ?

[steve]

Look into reptile carpet. I would expect outdoor carpet to be chemically treated (what isn't?).

[Ranger The Red Ear Slider]

Well wouldn't plexiglass bowl in over time? Whole idea for tile is for it to be strong enough to hold for years to come but the carpet be easier on his plastron and absorb water better. And I used fake grass on his ATBA now I don't know if it was treated or not. But the downfall of that is once you cut it it starts to unweave itself like a torn t-shirt.

[Kansasslider]

Depends on how thick the plexi is and how much your turtle weighs. The tile looks good gtw.

[steve]

Tile and plexi are good options. Tile will also hold down PVC supports. As for the unweaving, maybe you can get a soldering iron or a heat up the tip of a flathead screwdriver and melt it, in a well ventilated room of course.

[Kansasslider]

viewtopic.php?f=6&t=34211

[Ranger The Red Ear Slider]

That looks really good! I'll have to compare prices to decide what to use.