For a while now Charlotte has been trying to convince me to buy her a new dock – apparently the old dock does not match her feng-shui aquarium. How does she persuade me? By starting to eat it. She had a Zoo Med Floating Turtle Dock which seemed sturdy enough to me, but apparently it’s made of some sort of coated polystyrene that wasn’t strong enough to withstand a turtle’s rage. By the time I took it out of her tank, the dock bore only a slight resemblance to the one I originally bough from the store. The ramp was completely gone and she couldn’t climb on the dock anymore because of it.
I ignored her weird behaviour for a about a week but it got on my nerves because the aquarium soon became filled with tiny floating pieces of dock. I had to scoop them out every few days and,on top of that, my filter got clogged and stopped working. Fortunately it didn’t break, and after cleaning it everything was fine. I decided I had enough and went on the Internet looking for other types of turtle docks, preferable plastic ones that couldn’t be eaten. I found that there only a few turtle docks/platforms commercially available, and only one big and sturdy enough that I could use. It’s the Kordon Turtle Ramp that is made of hard plastic and comes in different sizes. I was ready to buy it when I realized I would be paying almost $40 for a piece of plastic. I decided to take on the challenge of building Charlotte a dock myself which would give me the satisfaction of having built it and also save me a few dollars. I ended up spending $0 because all the materials I used for the project I already had in the house. I used a rectangular lid from a storage container, some thick wire, and a piece of a non-slippery rubber mat. I modified the lid a little to make a slopped side that would act like a ramp, I stapled the rubber mat to the platform and the ramp, attached the wire to the sides and the back of the platform, and hung the platform from the sides of the tank using the wires.This whole project took me about 2 minutes.
I introduced the new platform in Charlotte’s tank 3 days ago and so far she hasn’t basked on it. I’ve seen her get up and walk around on it and soon return in the water. I will give her a few more days before increasing the basking temperature a little to encourage her to come out. During these three days she’s been bitting it almost constantly but so far the dock is still intact.
Update Dec 1: She’s finally using the new dock to bask. After about a week of bitting it, bumping into it, and basically doing her best to destroy it, she concluded that the dock was sturdy enough and gave it a try.
I could only snap one quick picture before she jumped in the water.
And here’s a picture of just the new dock. You can see the large container lid with the rubber mat attached to it, and the wires that hang it from the sides of the tank.
Posted by JL on February 14, 2011 at 9:48 AM
How’d you modify the cover to be sloped?
Posted by vecinana on February 14, 2011 at 11:48 AM
As you can see in the first picture, the container lid had 4 flaps on all sides that were used as a locking mechanism. When I built the platform, I bent one down a little and attached the rubber cover in such a way that it would help hold it in that position. It acted like a little ramp that helps the turtle climb up on the platform.