Hi! Introduce yourselves here.

hi there! i'm introducing myself. my name is kate and i have a 22 year old res named snapper. she came with the name. i've had her for just over a year. she is 8 inches long and very personable. she spent her life before me in a 20 gallon tank with no light or heat source and no interaction with anyone or anything. somehow she came out of it with her health and sanity intact. i'd never had a turtle before and i am amazed everyday by how smart and fun snapper is! i thought snapper might feel segregated in her tank (which is 100 gallons, complete with landscaping, basking spots, heater, lights, and a great filter) so i let her spend most of the day hanging out in the house and yard with my family and our 6 cats. she seems to have a fascination with jonah who is a 20 pound cat with long white fur. whenever he stretches out in the sun, snapper heads over to attempt to perch on his belly. i can understand why, it looks like a pretty sweet basking spot. i try not to dwell on how unpleasant her life was for 21 years. her previous owners weren't mean...just ignorant (they didn't even know she was a lady turtle, they thought she was a boy!). i didn't know the first thing about turtles but i knew snapper deserved better. so i did some research and put together her tank and got my boyfriend to agree that a turtle was a good addition to our family. i hope to learn some great tips on how to improve snapper's life even more in this forum!

Welcome Kate and Snapper! The tank sounds pretty interesting, do you have any pictures of it?

i tried to resize my picture so i could post it but i'm having difficulties so i just cropped it to at least show snapper's river rock beach and basking perch. it isn't all that interesting but i'm hoping to get lots of suggestions on how to improve it. i want to get a tank that is 200 gallons and has room for a couple different basking spots. i've tried other set-ups like floating docks but snapper seems to prefer that rock or else the docks aren't substantial enough for her grown-up turtle weight. and she likes her perch to be canted so that she rests at a 45 degree angle. i also tried some different aquatic plants and she always digs them up so i just rooted one of my houseplants in water and let the roots help keep the river rocks in place and so far she's left them alone. she seems to have very specific ideas of where she wants things and i've noticed that if she wants out of her tank the first thing she does is take everything apart! she'll dump her basking rock out into the open "pond" and dig through all the river rocks until i take her out of the tank. is this a normal behavior? it cracks me up because she is so determined and single-minded.

It looks very nice but there are 4 issues when this is done: 1. these take up a huge amount of swimming area 2. pebbles/gravel will post serious problems if ingested 3. pebbles/gravel will trap a lot of waste, fouling the water sooner 4. there is a potential trapping issue behind tight areas.

do you think sand would be a better choice? my vet was the one who recommended the river rocks. i just read the post about indoor habitats with sand. it sure looked pretty!

Sand works great. If you want to use river rock, get the larger ones.

Welcome! Snapper is beautiful!

thanks! i think she is pretty too

then again i think all animals are beautiful (and insects too, even roaches) so i'm not much of a judge. you have cats too! does keke like them? does she smell them or try to climb them?

Not really lol. At first the cats were more interested in him than he was with them, but now he doesn't seem to care at all haha. Keke loves my dog though, always climbs on him and follows him around

Hi! Introduce yourselves here. :: i have a turtle and i want to talk about her...hi!

Who is online