Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Today I was told that someone is trying to sell his 90 gal tank with oak stand. Of course I was interested but figure it would be too expensive, especially now since we are buying a home soon. When I was told that he was selling it for $100 I said we’ll take it! We were then told that he was not selling any of his pumps or filters with it but it didn’t bother us because we are getting a 90 gal tank with an oak stand for only $100! Now I can combine three turtles into one. I am going to keep the aggressive turtle in his original tank so he won’t bother the other turtles. After we get our house I am going to look into setting up a pond in the back yard for them all. Then I will use the 90 gal for the winter. 90 gals is big enough for three turtles right? One is full grown and old and the others are almost full grown. Oh Right now I have shelves for basking areas that suction cup to the sides of the tanks. Then they have a leg that reaches down to the bottom of the tank. I have the leg up on a couple rocks to make it higher so the water level can be deeper. These shelves will not work in the 90 gal because they won't be able to reach the bottom of the tank and they will fall down all the time. What does everyone suggest I use for a basking area in the 90 gal. Pictures would be nice. Thank you in advance. Oh it comes with a hood too so we won't fill the tank all the way and we will get one of those long UVB bulbs and use that for the basking light. Unless it would be better to keep the hood off and just continue to use the cone shaped light (I have it attached to the wall and it shines down on the tank) as their basking light.

trash the fish hood, and build your own. Flourescent (long) lights dont put out enough heat to be a basking lamp. I know I post this photo all the time, but its a simple design, and increases your basking and water area.
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trash the fish hood, and build your own. Flourescent (long) lights dont put out enough heat to be a basking lamp. I know I post this photo all the time, but its a simple design, and increases your basking and water area.

Also this is a temp hood even, I will be building a new one for my 120 gall I expect to get next week. Although if I coulda got a 90 for $100 I wouldve. My 120 will set me back $240

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Wow a 120. We went to petsmart today to see how big this tank is going to be and man it's going to be huge. We were told to be sure we found the studs in the floor and put it on them. Our apartment is so small I think we will wait to set it up until we move into the house. I will just keep the empty tank in the bedroom till then (about 5 months). We will also need to get a better filter. LOL the filter is probably going to be more than the tank! Anyway should we keep the tank on the first floor and should we get a stud finder to figure out where to put the tank, or was he wrong about that?
Thanks.

If your ground floor is a slab, or has a slab beneath it, it will be fine, otherwise it wouldn't hurt to determine which way your floor joists run and set the tank perpendicular to these (so it distributes the weight across several joists). If this is an old house, I'd have a handiman take a look and see what he/she thinks.

For ease of maintenance and good exercise room, you should decide on how you are doing your basking spot, so you can figure out how much water is in the tank. If it's not all the way to the top, measure the height of the water, and the height of the tank and use that fraction to calculate water volume. I would strongly encourage you to have a ratio of turtle length (in inches) to gallons of water that is at least 1 inch per 10 gallons. For the measurement, go with a straight line carapace measurement (if you set your turtle on a tape measure and put a book in front and back of it and saw where the books where marked, you'd have a SLC measurement).

At this volume you can set up a tank that will be very low maintenance and have plenty of room for it's inhabitants. I would recommend using two filters at once. One would be a UGF filter (under gravel filter), which is a plate you put in the empty tank, pile several inches of gravel on, and then put tubes in that reach up to the top where you attach powerheads. Another regular here uses powerheads on reverse flow, which is a great idea. This makes a HUGE biological filter that keeps your water quality stable. Combine this with also using a large cannister filter (like fluval 404 or eheims, etc) and the cannister will 'scrub' the water, pulling out debris and poop and such. Feed your turtles in a separate container and you will have the lowest maintenance turtle tank you can at this volume with this filtration.

you can use the hood if you like, but you still have to add a heat fixture to it over the basking spot. A flourescent uvb bulb is good for uvb, but does nothing for basking heat.

Kudo's on moving them outdoors when you can. That is the ultimate life for a turtle.