Aquarium Tank Setup
We started Frank & Fred in a ten-gallon tank, but within a couple of months I got the twenty-gallon tank pictured here to give them more room to swim. (I like spoiling my pets.) By the time they were a little over a year old, I’d moved up to a 55 gallon tank. They spend almost all of their time underwater - sliders spook easily, and evidently they feel safer underwater. I’m just guessing here, but I’d imagine they’re vulnerable to predators out of the water.
We originally put some large rocks and a big plastic fake-rock basking platform in the tank, but they just didn’t have an easy time getting up on the rock to bask. Since they were in my home office, I came in and out all the time and startled them. It broke my heart to see them dive off the platform and then spend ten minutes struggling to get back up. I built them a special platform - I called it their patio.
I took a sheet of plexiglass, cut it to fit the tank, and suspended it from the top of the tank using metal brackets and stainless steel wire. Make sure to use brackets and wire designed for outdoor use, because plain metal brackets and wire will rust in this wet environment.
The wire let me adjust the height of the platform as they grow. As they get bigger, you want more water in the tank, so they have room to swim. I built an angled ramp connected to the platform, so they can walk up the ramp easily - it extended about 4″ down into the water. I covered the whole thing with vinyl floor tile. The ramp had a grid of floor tile pieces so they could grip it with their claws and climb easier.
The whole thing worked like a charm - it’s easy to take out of the tank at cleaning time, and they can get up easily. (They still prefer to jump down as opposed to taking the ramp, which makes for some amusing high-dives.) They grew to the point where the two of them pretty much take up the whole patio.
If you’re just starting out, and your slider is the size of a large coin, then do yourself a favor and jump straight to a 20 gallon long tank (not a normal 20 gallon, make sure it’s a “long” to give your fella swimming room) and get the cheapest canister filter you can find.
The photo above shows a glass thermometer inside the tank - DO NOT DO THIS. Turtles love to bang and bite stuff inside the tank, and sure enough, they managed to shatter this thermometer over time. Thank goodness the mercury didn’t leak out, but it was a matter of luck.
Cleaning Turtle Tanks with Filters
Before you get a slider or any other aquatic turtles, be aware that you need to clean their tanks at least once (and preferably twice) a week, or else get a serious canister filter like a Fluval. These guys eat, drink, and poop in their pool. You have to empty all the water, scrub it clean, put the tank back and refill it. Until you get your routine down, it’s an hour of work each time. I love these little guys, but they’re no less work than a dog or a cat. Maybe less work than hamsters, though.
In the summer of 2002, when they were about a year old, I had to clean my 55 gallon tank twice a week. The cleaning takes an hour or two, and that was unacceptable. I bought a Fluval 404 filter, which is one of those huge external jobs that sits on the floor, pumps dirty water out of the tank and presumably cleaner water back in. WOW! What a difference. I changed out a few gallons of water each week, and completely dump the tank & filter and clean it every 4-5 weeks. I didn’t clean it because I had to, but just because I wanted to - the water was clear and smelled great even at 5 weeks.
(Just as a frame of reference, I took the photo at the top of this page long before I switched to a 55-gallon tank with a Fluval.)
With the Fluval, the water was always pretty clear, even though I fed ‘em in the tank. Some people recommend feeding them in a separate tank or in the tub, but that’s too much of a hassle. I used to give them treats of lunchmeat now & then, but that trashed up the tank quickly, so I only fed them lunchmeat in the tub.
I also used a liquid product called TurtleClean, which you add to the water once a week. Thumbs-up there - works great, helps a lot, worth the money.
Aquarium Filtration Media
The Fluval 404 has a foam filter that catches the bulk of the turtle poop. Rinse this filter at least once every two weeks, and replace it every couple of months.
The 404 also has 4 levels of trays to hold media, and these do the actual water-cleansing. The dirty water goes from the bottom of the filter up to the top of the filter, so you have to put the coarsest media at the bottom (to catch big stuff) and the finest media at the top (to clean the water). There are tons of different things you can put in the trays to clean the water in different ways - for example, charcoal filters out the finest, tiniest impurities. Don’t put charcoal in the bottom tray of the filter, because it will quickly get overwhelmed by the incoming poop. Instead, you put it in the very top tray, so water only hits charcoal after it’s already been through the filtration media trays that are designed to catch the big stuff.
On the bottom layer, I used the thick ceramic media that looks like gray Cheerios. That trapped the small pieces of poop that got past the foam filter. Then I used two layers of ammonia-neutralizing crystals, and on the top, a layer of black carbon to clean the water. Your mileage may vary, and feel free to play around with different combinations to see what works for your turtles.
When you put the small filtration media (crystals, charcoal, etc) in the media trays, they will fall out. To prevent that, aquarium shops sell filter bags made of stuff like cheesecloth. You put the media inside the bags, then put the bags in the trays. In the multitasker spirit of Alton Brown, I say there’s a better way: pantyhose.
Pour the crystals into the foot of the pantyhose, just enough to fill the tray about 1/2-2/3 of the way, and then tie off a knot in the pantyhose so the crystals don’t escape. Cut the pantyhose off, and presto, you have a little filtration ball of crystals. They’re much easier to handle than just dumping the crystals directly into the Fluval, because the Fluval trays will let crystals fall down into the bottom of the filter. Anything that
ends up at the bottom of the filter will quickly get fouled, and won’t help.
Then tie another knot in the bottom of the pantyhose, and repeat, creating little filtration packets. Have fun buying more at the drugstore, hahaha.
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