Sand Update

Well I have had the sand for what, 2-3 weeks, and it is still going great. The tank water has remained very clean, and I have only been replacing evaporated water as needed. Squirts poo just sits on the top, along with other debris to either get sucked up by the filter, or get netted up by me. 

If you are thinking about sand, I recommend doing it! If you are reading this and have any questions about the process of switching to sand, feel free to post a comment here and I'll answer it. 

Stupid Cuttlebone

The Cuttlebone I had bought before floated like a cork for as long as it took for Squirt to eat it. I ran out of that cuttlebone, So I had to buy a different one. This new one, I removed the backing and all, then break off a chunk, and throw it in the tank. I wake up the next morning to see it sitting on the sand, Sunk. 

Stupid thing didn't even last a day without sinking. I'm probably just going to give the rest of this cuttlebone to the Ornate Boxie, then just go buy a better cuttlebone and hope it doesn't sink. 

Loves his lettuce.

I gave squirt his usual shell sized piece of lettuce this morning, but when I checked back 30 min later it was all gone! Normally it takes him all day to slowly munch his piece of lettuce. So I gave him another piece of shell size lettuce which he ate in 30 minutes. I decided that was it for veggies today, Can't have a fat turtle on my hands! 

I still have been procrastinating on re-planting that plant. I was going to net his poop and then re plant the plant but he ate the poop already so I thought I would let the plant slide. 

Who knows though, its only 8:25 so I might fix it before I go to bed later. 

Lettuce Munching

I finally remembered to get Squirt some romaine lettuce and he loves it! I have been feeding it to him for the past few days and he has really taking a liking to it. Today he actually finished his whole shell sized piece of lettuce that was floating in the tank and cleaned up the little torn up bits on the surface. So happy that I got a turtle who enjoys his veggies. It would be a pain in the ass if he didn't like veggies. 

Uprooted a plant

Squirt uprooted the plant in the center of the tank today. Squirt wasn't really digging to uproot the plant, But he likes to swim through and around it so it ended up slowly pulling out of the sand. It's okay though because I need to scrape off the water line marks with a razor and add some water tomorrow. So I will just fix the plant while I am at it. 

Squirt finished shedding scutes!

Squirt has finally finished shedding all of his scutes! His shell is very smooth and healthy looking now. He has a lot more yellow stripes on the top of his shell that have really come out with the latest shed. Would post a photo but he moves way too fast. 

Made the switch to sand

I made the switch to sand last night. It went very well and the tank is looking WAY better than it did with the river rocks. It only costed $8.00 for enough sand to do the whole tank. I rinsed the sand out very well and got minimal cloudiness. It went very smoothly and Squirt loves to walk on the sand. The Fluval Internal filter does not pick up any sand and the sand settles very quickly if it gets kicked up. I am very pleased with how it turned out. 

Shedding Scutes

Squirt is finally shedding his loose scutes and his shell is looking very vibrant. His colors came back brighter this time after the shed. It's kinda funny though, Only 2 in the center of his shell have actually completely  come off so he has two vibrant scutes with all the rest being dull and bubbly. It kinda sticks out like a sore thumb. Hopefully he finishes shedding soon, I'm sick of bubbly and dull! Ha ha 

Squirts tank with the addition of river rocks.

Well, As promised heres some pictures of squirts tank with the new river rock/slate bottom. They took forever to place and are probably going to be messy but the look of the tank makes it all worth it!

Siphoning the tank, Gone wrong....Again!

I went to do the siphoning of the tank today, and had the whole tank spotless after a little bit of siphoning. Thats when it went wrong. I decided I was going to clean my Fluval internals media. I lift the filter out somewhat carefully and slowly, But I should have done it fast..a bunch of crap blew up into the water! UGH!

So I take Squirt out and put him in a corner of my room and close it off so he can wander freely on a little patch of carpet. I then siphon out all the crap, clean the filter, scrub the dock down and everything else.

Thats when I decide that the Slate rock slabs I have had in there for a few months are looking bare and boring. So I go and grab a bunch of large river rocks and place them in the tank along with the slate. So now the bottom of my tank is black and tan slate w/ lots of river rocks. It looks very nice if you ask me.

So I put the dock and filter back in the tank, plug in the heater, and decide I should give the lone guppy a buddy or few. Well I gave him 4 more buddies so there is now 5 guppies in the tank. We'll see how long that total lasts....I doubt very long. It's kinda funny all the guppies school together and kinda hang with each other.

Now the tank is all set back up and I just saw Squirt basking about 5 minutes ago. He loves his basking!

I'll post some pics of the newly arranged tank tomorrow... To lazy and tired to do it tonight.

thanks for reading

Siphoning the tank

I am talking about siphoning out poop that the filter does not pick up and other little annoying bits of "Turtle Sludge". I do this every few days and have accepted it as part of the routine now w/ turtle keeping. 

It does get annoying however, taking off the lights, and screen top, to get access to the tank water. I then drain the water into a 5 gallon bucket, picking up everything, and then put fresh water in. So it kinda doubles as a 10-15% water change at the same time while cleaning out "turtle sludge". 

Lately, I have been slacking off and haven't siphoned the tank in about a week.. Oops. But it's not like the water is dirty or anything, just some turtle sludge is building up on the bottom in the one corner where the filter does not reach. 

Oh yeah, this reminds me, I should clean my filter media this weekend. Guess I'll do that while I'm siphoning tomorrow. 

Feeder Guppies Part III

Squirt did end up eating 3 of the 4 guppies I put into the tank. The last one seems to be very evasive, and stays in the opposite corner from squirt at all times and he is way to fast to be caught (smart fish). However the little guppy is slowly getting bolder and going closer and closer to squirt(Dumb Fish). So it will just be a matter of days until I find that the guppy is no longer in there.