Building a 4x3 Turtle Spa DIY

kameya

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Mar 18, 2010
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282
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Orange County, California
I just built a small 3x4 turtle spa to house some of my semi-terrestrial turtles over this weekend. It was a project that I was able to work by myself with the kids helping on the digging. The material cost was less than $100.

Here is the engineer drawing/sketch for the turtle spa... just give me a rough idea on how much materials I would need to do the project...
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Laying out bricks around the spa outline...leveling the first tier of soil...ready to dig out more dirt for second tier and third tier of the spa...
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The second tier layer is the main water body, and the lower third tier is used for hiding the bio sponge filter and underwater fish cave..
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The amount of the dirt that was dig out during the entire work, and it became a natural small mountain for the turtles to climb...
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Black vinyl liner was placed over the soils to create a seamless water pool, then bricks were added back to cement the liner...
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More bricks were added on top of the original bricks to hide the liner edges...now we also had the nice bubbling spa up and running...
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Adding some various sizes of floor tiles to create the bottom of the water spa...and also used the bigger pieces to create ramps for turtles to enter and exit the spa...plants and some mosquito fishes were also added to the pond to make it into a bio live pond...
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Here is a snapshot of the turtle habitat... spa one one side and the small mountain on the other side, with the newly planted hibiscus tree in the middle... now we are in business...

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And as usual, any newly-built turtle habitat/water feature/hide will evolve over time as the turtles and tortoises grow into their new environment, so I will continue to work on this water feature to make it more suitable for my turtles...
 

Blackdog1714

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Richmond, VA
Nice- just maybe addition of plants over time- Maybe a little small for humans!:D
 

kameya

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10 Year Member!
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Mar 18, 2010
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Location (City and/or State)
Orange County, California
Nice- just maybe addition of plants over time- Maybe a little small for humans!:D

right... I would like to be inside too if I am small enough...

Regarding to the plants...it will be hard to stock up plants in this turtle spa because the turtles will be eating them like crazy... but that's why I chose the spot to build this turtle spa... it's located right next to my outdoor water plant garden, I will just remove the overgrown water plants from the water garden and throw them into the water spa and my turtles will have plenty of the plants to eat...

IMG_20190812_074228799.jpg
 

Blackdog1714

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5 Year Member
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Richmond, VA
Gotta- maybe potted plants sitting on the concrete? Offer shade and over growth, but would be out of nibble range? Irregardless awesome addition for a turle to lounge in!
 
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