Cleaned out tank...almost

I did a large cleaning of the tank the other day. I cleaned the canister filter, wiped the tubes of the filter, cleaned half of the sand, did a 50% water change, cleaned the plants of algae, and cut out the screen for his UVB light. 

It took me a while, but it was a relief when it was finished. 

better container for reptomin

Well I was getting a container to keep my CGD in for my geckos, and I thought why not get one for reptomin. 

It's a snapware container, which is water and air tight. 

attack of the algae!

Holy crap. I left for a few days and was lazy and didn't do the weekly maintenance, the tank had some algae going on before but now, 4 days later, wow. The stuff is all over the place. On the front, at the sandline, on the back, and other areas. 

So looks like tomorrow I'm going to have to go full on and do like a 50% water change, clean out my filter and the tubes from algae, wipe the sides, and scrub off the dock. 

The things we do for these damn turtles....sheesh. Lol.

Hand feeding.

Well today I actually tried handfeeding Squirt. 

He did really well, at first he was a bit skittish, but after a few inspections he came right up and took the pellet from my hand. I fed him his daily 4 pellets by hand today. It was pretty cool, I can definitely see how it could be called "bonding" time with your turtle. 

I was a little skittish of even feeding him the pellet, for fear of him missing and nabbing my hand. But people had said if they nip you hand while feeding it isn't as hard as a aggressive bite. So I just went for it. 

So all in all it worked great, but I don't know how often I'll do it because it is somewhat time consuming compared to just tossing in 4 pellets and watching them disappear in 10 seconds or less. 

Digital Timer

I got this a few days ago, and man, how awesome. I had been a bit behind the curve with getting a timer, and had been just turning on the lights when I woke up and when I went to bed. Squirt was getting a bunch of weird hours of light, varying from 11-14 hours a day. That's not cool. 

So we had a timer, but it was an older type that had the push pin style of setting it. Needless to say, I tried to figure it out, but it was a son of a bitch to set, and I ended up just giving up on it. 

I got this Tabletop digital lamp timer. How awesome, It is SO easy to set it's ridiculous. All you have to do is set the time, press set, select the on time, press set, select the off time, press set. Done! so frickin easy. It has a double timer kind of thing where you can set 2 cycles per day, but that's useless for me. 

Anyway, I set it so that it comes on at 10:15AM and goes off at 10:30PM. This way it suits my summer schedule a bit better and gives him 12 hours and 15 minutes of light. Now he can get on a real schedule. 

It was only like $12 bucks too. And it has a 300 watt capacity. But I don't even come close to that, 60 watt basking bulb, 25 watt fluorescent strip light, and a 15 watt UVB tube. So that's only 100 watts being drawn. Maybe give or take a few watts because I'm only guessing about the wattage of the strip light. 

Anyway, Good stuff, Get a timer if you haven't already!

Algae! Ugh.

I hate algae. It finally showed up along the sand line in the front of the tank. I have been wiping the tank every week, but I didn't wipe under the sand line. So now there's algae. 

Oh, and it's finally showing on the edges of his basking dock as well. Have to scrub that off as well. 

Anyway, I'll get rid of it when I do my tank maintenance tomorrow. It's due for it. I'll just push the sand back and wipe from now on. 

Bubble Feature

Well, I tried an airstone in Squirts tank the other day, as I have heard many peoples turts like to play in the bubbles and bite them and whatnot.

So I put it in there, he's all curious of course, but the second I turn it on, he freaks out and swims to the other side of the tank and stays there!

He was staying over there for more than a few minutes, so I turned off the airstone to try another day.

So I turn it on the next day, He didn't give a shit about it! Just swam around like normal and paid no special attention to the bubbles. So I took the airstone out as it didn't even look that great.

So squirt+bubbles=no go.
Oh well, it just wasn't meant to be I guess, Ha!

Strawberry!

I thought since my mom has a garden with way too many strawberries ripe at once, I would give one to squirt for variety.
So I grab one, cut a few slits in it, and then clip the stem into my veggie clip. I stick it in his tank and he comes right over. He looks at it like what in the hell is this! and kinda did the flutter motion without the shaking to see if he could break it up smaller. Then he bit the berry a few times, and ate most of what he bit off.

Then, He lost interest! He didn't pick at the berry again all night! Little Bastard. haha

In hindsight, I should have cut the berry into small strips and let them float around the tank. Maybe he would have eaten better that way, The veggie clip is still new to him and he seems to like chasing his food around rather than having it in one spot constantly.

Anyway, Let your turt get a taste of summer! give him/her a piece of fruit!
(not too often though, once a week max, and no bigger than what would fit in their head since it's high in sugar!)