Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I was planning on building a indoor pond for my young gator using a 300gal rubbermaid stock tank any suggestions? Also if this is used I need ideas on putting a top on it, so plz let me know!

I am no expert, but I think it would be really neat to do that with a small deck around the outside for basking. With this setup you could put a nice deck type fence around the perimeter. How do you want to use a cover? Derek

yeah the deck ideas something i'm toying around with he's "the gator" is still pretty small so i was gonna just cover the top of the tank in a mesh screen for now

First off, how big is your gator?

here's how we house our small gators and caiman indoors at the zoo. the stock tanks work okay, but you need to make a hualout. we used big rocks covered with marine grade carpet. For the top we just make a 2x4 frame with some coated screening made snug to the top. easy to remove and can still see animals without removing. Plan on draining and replacing water very often via a bulkhead or sump pump if you are not using filtration. I see this being the best way as gators are messy, and the water gets funky fast (two or three days) and filters can't keep up with it. We have tired so many filters that we find the sump method the easiest. Are you going to be hibernating it in this or will you be heating it. If you are heating it I think it would be better to heat the room and let the water come to room temp rather then using a heater, as the gator will most definitely break it, and depending on the heater, harm the animal. Good luck and let me know how it goes.

BTW, do you have any outside housing to use in the spring/summer? I'm not gonna get all "are you planning for the future blah blah blah." Just wondering. I'm always looking for ideas for our non display animals. what we have is okay, but it doesn't hurt to try something new, ya' know.

>>I was planning on building a indoor pond for my young gator using a 300gal rubbermaid stock tank any suggestions? Also if this is used I need ideas on putting a top on it, so plz let me know!

I plan on having a huge indoor pond I acctually started this already but due to funds it's going slow u know but it's huge it will have a water fall rain chamber the works