Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I have my hatchling & yearling boxies in a large aquarium (they'll be going outside in a month or so). For their water, I converted a "Drinkwell" cat water fountain into a shallow pool which has filtration and an add-on water supply. It was doing fine (with frequent filter cleanings), but now that the babies are getting bigger, their messes are bigger (along with the substrate that they carry in with them) and the pump keeps getting clogged & stops working.

I want to make a new pool (using an external powered filter system) for them. My question is to see if anyone has "construction" ideas for making a pool that I can place in a corner or at one end of my tank. It would need to be fairly shallow (boxies only need an inch or so of water depth), yet able to accomodate a filter. Maybe only about 18" diameter to fit inside my 60 gal. aquarium/habitat without taking away from their "land" space. It dosen't have to be fancy.

When I was a kid, I kept a lot of water snakes and garter snakes. I used to make little semiaquatic tanks by securing a piece of plexiglass(acrylic) across the width of the tank near one end and extending up just a few inches. You can purchase silicone aquarium sealant at advanced fish stores or on the internet (you may need a caulking gun).

These worked very well for what I needed them for. The only problems were creating sloping exits from the water area and cleaning.

Thanks for the info. What an easy solution -- I think I was trying to make this project harder than it needed to be so I thought about your idea, and.... I ended up using a small kitty litter pan (approx. 9"x13"x 4"deep) and layered it with large rocks. I have more rocks propped around the outside edges and have the substrate banked up on the rocks. So far, I have the intake & outflow tubes burried beneath the rocks, but will eventually come up with another, more secure arrangement. It looks kinda nice, actually, and the babies seem to approve (all 8 of them!!).

I want to move the babies outside ASAP, but I have to enlarge the outdoor habitat first. We've had so much rain, that the ground is mush and I can't work on it. I think they're happy inside for now, though.

I just took this picture of my new pool. Sorry there were no turtles near by at the time. I bought a Zoo Med 501 filter. Read a lot of pros & cons about it, but think it's going to do fine for what I need.

Oooops! I was trying to get the new photo in and accidently selected this one. I'll try again.

I just took this picture of my new pool. Sorry there were no turtles near by at the time. I bought a Zoo Med 501 filter. Read a lot of pros & cons about it, but think it's going to do fine for what I need.

This is a 60-ish gal. tank, so the pool only takes up about 1/4 of the available space.