tecngame wrote:What is everyone's thoughts on having sand on the bottom? I personally do not like it. I feel it clogs up the filter very quickly. I have a Rena XP3 filstar filter.
Larger already polished rocks at Petco in a 10lb bag run around $15 a bag.... quite a bit of money for some rocks if you ask me. I think as soon as winter is over, my turtles will be finding new rocks from what i pick uip at lakes and ponds when we go fishing.
I can understand your issues with sand. I haven't made the leap to sand because my turtle digs too much and I don't want to mess with the hassle. As far as rock from around the lakes and ponds.... I would really recommend against it.
Those rocks can have parasites, bacteria and a host of other organisms living in them that could cultivate in your tank and harm your turtle. Additionally those stones are usually pretty porous and would allow for debris, food and other waste from your tank to build up in the rocks which can create toxic levels in your tank. I read somewhere that someone had tried to boil the rocks and because of something that was in the rocks themselves they can explode under the heat if the right elements exist in the makeup of the stones.
The stones you see in the bags are sterilized, polished and sealed and that's why they tend to be better to use. HOWEVER. I had those things in my tank when I first inherited my turtle and all he did was dig through them all day and push them out of his way... it was a hassle and it also made cleaning the tank harder because I had to remove all of the rocks each time I needed to clean the tank because so much waste would get trapped under the layer of rock.
I ended up going with large stacking stones I got at Petsmart and i just lined the bottom of the tank with them. they are large enough that when I need to clean it only takes a minute to remove the stones. They are actually made of a chemically inert resin that wont bleed chemicals into the tank. When algae grows on them I can scrub them pretty easily or just throw them into the dishwasher (no soap of course)
If you want to see what they look like just look at my build thread in my signature.