Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Hi all,

I'm going to be putting together an outdoor enclosure for a few yearling star tortoises and have some questions. Hopefully someone has some answers.

Does anyone have any experience using the Rubbermaid stock tanks outdoors? I was thinking of getting a 300 gallon and tank, putting down some gravel, liner and then soil. I would build a locktown screen cover. Do you think that it would get too hot inside, because of the tank's dark color? Would it be better to use the metal stock tanks?

Also, what is the best soil mix to put down for them to run on, and also to plant grasses and weeds into for them to munch on?

Any and all suggestions would be great!

Thanks,

Becca

Hi,

I use a cattle trough which I believe is the same thing.
I use them for my aquatic turtles but not for my tortoise.
They will get very warm but just as dangerous is that if
it rains it will quickly fill drowning your baby. You
can drill holes in the bottom to help but with a heavy
rain you still run the risk.

It might be better to somehow keep your baby on the
ground and build around that. Also, you can put a little
house a couple of inches above the ground in case of rain.

Hope this helps!

I have a pair of 3-4 month old Star and I built them an outside enclosure using plastic wading pools. Check out this site: http://www.geocities.com/~pawsplus/torthab.html. It's very inexpensive and easy to put together as a temporary pen until they are bigger then you can build them something nicer but for now this works great. I planted clover, bermuda grass, dandelion and some mixed seeds that I bought from Turtle Cafe. For substrate I used a mixture of 3 parts organic soil mixed in with 1 part of washed play sand.