New Years Makeover

That sounds so glamorous doesn’t it?   You’d never think it means that I spent new years day playing in the dirt!  Did you really think it meant I was off getting a facial or something?  Eish, you don’t know me at all!

I spent most of the day yesterday washing out 25 kilos (55 pounds) of sand for my 360 liter turtle tank.   I used to keep bare bottoms on all my tanks because I thought it was easier to clean AND because the other turtle keepers on the American forums rave about sand being so dangerous.  They go on and on about turtles eating sand and becoming impacted and dying.  Scared the bejesus out of me.

Then I was schooled by some friends on the Dutch turtle forums.   Basically, don’t listen to the silly Americans, they think EVERYTHING is dangerous. haha  (sorry guys!)

I argued with them for a while, as I’d been completely brainwashed against sand in turtle tanks, but after being told by pretty much every Dutch turtle keeper I know that they’ve always used sand with no problem, I figured maybe they were right.   From what I can tell from research on both forums, the Americans talk about impaction and dangers of sand a lot but when I asked about it, they all said they heard about it but not a single person had any experience with it themselves.   Turtle myth?  I dunno… I’m sure it has probably happened at some point, but that’s kind of like not giving kids bikes because somewhere, sometime, someone’s kid was hit by a car.

So, here’s the before and after…

It’s hard to believe I actually thought that looked good.   How boring and bare!! argh…

This is what it looks like now!

Big improvement, if I do say so myself!  The turts seem to love it as well, they spend a lot of time digging around the bottom now, keeps them from getting bored I suppose.  

Once we get an above tank basking area made for them, this tank will be complete.   Hopefully we’ll get that done sometime before the spring.