Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Hi, this may sound like a dud, but I want to build a pond on the top of my roof this spring. I live in an apartment, and the roof is free to us tenents. Last year I had some turtles up there but only kept them in plastic tubs. If possible, I want to build a pond up there this summer.

I can't buy plastic ponds or swimming pools at the stores where I live, which is in South Korea. They're non-existent, or hard to find. Therefore, I'm wondering if anyone can tell me what kinds of materials could make a fairly deep, 7ftx5ft pond that I can assemble and disassemble quickly? It's for my turtles, and doesn't have to be fancy.

I have heard of other people trying this:

Build a wooden frame to the dimentions that you desire. If you get creative you can probably come up with a way to make the frame collaspable, or so that it can come back apart and be reassembled multiple times without falling about. (I'm not much of a carpenter so someone else will have to help you out with ideas there.)

Anyway, once you have your frame or shell, get a pool liner to lay in it as your water-tight inside. The pool liner you can just cut to size since it will probably be big.

One word of caution... a 7ft by 5ft pond is going to weigh alot. If you filled it to 2ft, the weight would be over a ton. Now add rocks, turtles, pumps, etc...and you could possibly have structural problems. I dont know of many roofs out there that can hold that much weight in that small of an area.
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Coastal Carpet Python 0.1
Albino Burm 0.1
Columbian RedTail 0.1
Kenyan Sand Boa 1.0
Common Snapping Turtle 1.1
RES 1.0

I see. I won't make it deeper than a foot and probably keep it between 4ftLx3ftW at most. The roofs where I live are actually kind of balconies, where people can walk and do laundry. You know, your typical mid-western apartment type. But here they're a little more sturdy, I hope. I think they have steel beams.

How can I be sure?

Before you do something like this I would first make sure the rest of the tenants are okay with it AND the landlord says it's okay.