Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I have EBT's and am in the process of renovating & enlarging their outdoor habitat. For their water, what I'd really like to do is make a small pond rather than put up with a water bowl that has to be emptied daily... Of course, depth is an issue, and what about filtration? When these guys were babies, and I kept them inside, I used an Eheim canister filter to keep their water clean: I made their water area deep enough for the filter, but had a false floor that was raised higher so they had shallow depth even though there was a large water volume (does that make sense?). Anyway, those guys kept me cleaning that filter!!

Back to my question: I would love some advice on how to pull this off. Most of what I've read about ponds in general is geared toward depth, which isn't what I need. Will simply moving the water with a pump help with the cleanliness issues?

I found an article for a pond with a false bottom - exactly what I'm looking for! I'll get the address & post it. Pretty straight-forward.

The article referred to a "trickle filter," so I've been doing research on those. Looks like there are lots of DIY filters out there: they differ somewhat in design & supplies, but all seem to work on the principles of biological filtration and seem fairly large. Somewhere I read that there is a formula (?) for turtle filtration based on GPH water moved, so hoping that LARGER IS BETTER!

Anyone have experience here? Some of the articles I read stressed doing water checks to check for ammonia & nitrites, but those were for fish ponds or for aquatic turtles, not boxies. Would you care for this water the same way you would if it was for aquatics? If so, what would you use to "seed" the filter? Would adding some plants help the water quality? (couldn't hurt)? How best to work in a pre-filter?

Let's see if this link works...

http://www.boxturtlefacts.org/Wading_Safely.pdf

I had something very similar in both my boxie garden and my Redfoot enclosure. I had a stream leading into the pond, with the pump buried basically the same way. Something happened to the pump in the tortoise garden, and I had a mess trying to fix it. Now I changed it and have no filtration in either garden. For the Box Turtle garden, I have a small pond that holds 30 gal. I added enough river rocks in different sizes so that there is a slop that they can walk in and out of the pond easily. I put some pond plant in there and will add more plants soon as the weather gets warmer. The plants keep the pond pretty clean, and if I want to change the water I just put the hose in there and let trickle until the pond is clean. The overflow of water which is dirty feeds the plants. This has worked great for me with no maintenance, and problems. I did the same thing in the tortoise garden.

Terryo -- again, thanks (you responded to another of my posts). Your pond looks really nice. I can't wait to get started on mine, but it may be fall or next spring. I'm sort of waiting to determine the genders of all my babies, because I will be separating them (all are siblings). I have an idea for a way to use one pond with a separator that would actually divide the one pond into 2 separate ponds, sharing the same water. If that works out, I will be able to further enlarge the habitat (with a girl end and a boy end), having the shared pond in the middle.

BTW, what all plants have you used, and in particular, what water plants are working out?