*200 TURTLES* in 1 AWESOME Turtle Haven!

approximately 200. okay i'd say this is a 10 out of 10 turtle habitats yeah 100 and it ended up being a habitat for all kinds of things i mean lizards have moved in here small snake yeah this is bullet tooth tony he's the one that was shot in the head somebody caught him fishing so who's that coming at us that one's name is butthole because it is out without a tail and it only has a butthole welcome to living the aquascape lifestyle and you would never guess it that in this nice little neighborhood right over here is a turtle haven greg's turtle haven to be exact there he is right here oh i love it so greg two years ago i was here with ted we went and hung out and had a great time catching alligator snapping turtle we got eight alligator snapping turtle and that went out at night but that's kind of your thing and then we designed at that time an awesome aquascape ecosystem pond it's in the back yep all right let's go take a look at let's go check it out and little do people know what exists out here yeah wow look at all the turtles ponds over here turtles over here this is a diy pond yeah boy that's the life man those those turtles got the life oh yeah here they go they're starting to come what's up guys take it from my hand isn't it cool how every turtle has its own personality yeah you get to know him pretty well over the years so how many turtles in here buddy roughly 30 30 turtles yeah yeah but that's why i'm always kind of moving things and building things i've got a tortoise hanging out right here his name is leo of course hey leo how you doing buddy should we look at the aquascape ecosystem or should we get the tour of everything and then let's do that let's get the tour of all the other ones so this is like more of a swamp style pond this has some alligator snapping turtles in it nice there's about a thousand crayfish in it lots and lots so the crayfish are for the alligator snapping totally eat yeah i mean i actually will use them to feed all kinds of turtles yeah but i see like a regular slider here won't eat the plants that one's pretty cool he eats some of them yeah so why do you have one red or slider over here because it won't get along with anything else oh that's so funny so there's two alligator snappers in here there's three three so there's a blind one right there you can see part of her shell sticking up oh i see the shell yeah i see it right there yeah she can't see anything she doesn't have peoples in her eyes she has a congenital condition she was hatched out with just no pupils her hunting strategy is she'll tilt her head down and wait for the crayfish to run by and just clamp down on them oh that is so cool part of the hazards in the dangers would he have thought a toe was a uh oh yeah definitely thought a toe was part of his food yeah he probably just just wants to eat a toe no toes for you it's so hot everybody's kind of hiding right now but these guys are really cool and they're they're small my buddy in florida hatched this out oh what is it it's a russian tortoise okay but it's a it's a young captive bred one a lot of these are actually imported people are starting to captive breed them and this way you get healthier tortoises right impacting wild greg i can't believe you and i are friends i know well that thing is just like i had to have a home for it and i just parked it right there tortoise burrow oh yeah you bought this property with this in mind yeah i'd always wanted to kind of build just habitats in my backyard i mean i bought a house to have turtles just think about that i bought a house to have turtles you see why we're friends i was on zillow just skipping to all the backyard photos so we got some gulf coast box turtles and a pen back here these are gulf coast box turtles yeah so these are the largest box turtle in the u.s and these are the form that shows up around louisiana and mississippi these were they're probably related to the easter box store they have to see what they follow they're just like a larger cousin of the eastern box turtle these are really cool they're actually very aquatic they like to spend a lot of time in water okay so how many total turtles let's see i would actually have to look at my paperwork for dnr where i do my inventory because i don't remember off the top of my head because i break rocks i break it down by species so approximately 200 and okay and then down here we have a juvenile celcada tortoise set up so this is a smaller version of the other guy yeah yeah cutie and then over here asian tortoises and i set this up i wanted to utilize the bamboo because these tortoises and thailand lao vietnam they all live on these mountain sides that are covered in bamboo forests so the burmese mountain tortoise you see over there and the elongated tortoise in the corner these guys just kind of naturally you know take to the bamboo area so who's that coming at us that one's name is butthole because it's hatched out without a tail and it only has a butthole it's always funny when people ask me if it has a name that's actually a giant tortoise from asia so they get about celcata size they get really really big and then over here we have a single male alligator snapping turtle this guy was um given to me by a guy in georgia that had had him for years and he had two wow he asked me to take the small one so this is the small one that he had not that small but maybe 50 pounds he's about 80. 80 pounds look at this guy he's he's pretty cool he's pretty laid back yeah as far as alligator snapping turtles go but you know you don't want to make a dumb mistake with him so just put him back in here and this is going to be a whole new series of habitats going up this way so this is going to be for common snapping turtles i'm borrowing a lot of ideas from my friend fred grunwald's setups oh fred yes so this will be like a multi-tiered setup for the snapping turtles and then the next one will be a pond for asian turtles and side net and then up there potentially wood turtles so we've seen all of the do-it-yourselfer projects now let's talk about the pista resistance the aquascape ecosystem pond that's been in since october yes since october this is the dream come true i always wanted a true riverine system i've always told people like nobody will ever have a river in their backyard is a perfect habitat and then somebody put a river in my backyard so it works out great this looks spectacular i love this thing in it you know i've got native fish in here i've got native turtles in here there's a soft shell there there's a small alligator is that a soft shell back there yeah that's huge yeah i'm trying to get her out there's a gar right there florida gar yeah that's spotty guard florida here's the one koi let's try and get everybody going we've got a big map turtle there what is that um that's a big river cooter a little cooter huh yeah so right now the river cooters are in here and they're kind of handling some of the plant and algae duty so i kind of have everything balanced in it and the solcadas use this and the turtles can wander around yeah so as of right now there's no fence around it it enables like you know red foot tortoise yellow foot tortoise sulcata can come and get a drink but eventually when wood prices come down i'm gonna fence this whole thing in and it's gonna be a home for box turtles map turtles musk turtles so it'll be a huge ecosystem all these different types of turtles can use what do we got right here what's this guy that's a river cooter they're just a plant-eating turtle that you find in rivers and right there is that a rubber cooter too yeah that one right there is a rio grande river cooter so that's the the western version yeah you find those in texas and mexico when me and ed were talking about this and designing it i wanted a lot of hiding places almost where you're standing it actually goes up underneath there so there's caves and overhangs like what i'm standing on dropping stuff on the turtles have access to get completely underneath this rock as a shelter right right and the fish also use it so that was like one of the things i like when i go look for turtles and streams i like the overhangs and all the different places they spend their time [Music] i'd say this is a 10 out of 10 turtle habitat uh yeah 100 and it ended up being a habitat for all kinds of things i mean lizards have moved in here small snakes you know where my habitat is right here not a bad deal yes you guys came the first time we took the hose and kind of laid out like a pattern discussed how you need to make like elevation changes and where the filtration is going to run and then we started getting into replicating habitat what rock to use kind of stuff so it was an interesting process to be able to look into that world and see how you guys do it it doesn't take but maybe the first two or three hours you start to see the shape start to take form and then it's just everybody fine-tuning it leveling it next thing you know you're putting in underlayment getting that and then you get the liner and you start to really see the shape of the pond and then that's when it gets really exciting then the rocks start coming in and i love it when i was watching how they do the boulders and rocks i mean all my ponds have been built with stuff that i can carry and then when you see them you know strapping up you know what like a one ton rock or something right it's pretty crazy and the precision is so impressive i mean all the contractors and everybody i mean i was blown away with the skill and the precision that everybody did everything i mean i mentioned one time that i like ferns and everybody came together and just got me all these burns [Music] [Music] wow [Music] working with ed is amazing his brain is like when you watch like cnn or you know a news channel and there's like this this this and so yeah ed's brain is constantly working on just multiple things at once he's not only thinking of the finished product he's thinking he would even ask me like oh well how do you want this to look in terms of with the rest of the yard what are you going to incorporate this with later i mean he was taking in so many factors all at once and his knowledge and know-how from doing this how many years you know 28 years 28 years of experience he didn't miss a beat and he would check in with me and say what do you think of this what do you think of this that was another favorite part of mine is i was a part of the build even though i wasn't necessarily like driving a tractor or you know doing all that cool stuff so i was impressed [Music] i grew up with turtles i mean my dad had turtles when he was a kid and then from a very early age i was finding box turtles crossing the road in florida i was you know observing gopher tortoises crossing the road and so we would always help them across the road and then sometimes we would find them and you know like a lot of kids you observe them for a while let them go and then i remember getting my first turtle when i was in first or second grade and then you know caring for it and changing the water and learning all the things about how to care for water turtles how to care for land turtles it stuck with me and i i enjoyed it i can't imagine my life without them they've taken me places all over the u.s i've been you know on the other side of the world and gone looking for turtles and found interesting people that also are into turtles and they're truly unique animals there's a lot going on there one of the main things i always tell everybody is right now turtles and tortoises are the most endangered group of vertebrates on the planet they're rapidly losing habitat they're being eaten to extinction in some places there's a lot of poaching for the pet trade and for food and turtles just aren't fast enough to keep up with that and so a lot of it is our mess and it's our job to clean it up and the best way to clean it up is just to create awareness and create educated people that know maybe preserve the species maybe if you catch one fishing take the hook out and you know release it don't kill it or don't eat it or helping turtles across the road just helping a turtle get from point a to point b crossing the road that turtle could be laying eggs you helped that turtle across the road not only did you help save that one turtle but if she lays a nest of eggs you could have helped 10 more so is that a little cooter yeah yeah so that's a an adult and a yearling they love it when i turn that extra pump on so they just love sitting there in the current huh yeah yeah and it's cool because that's a behavior i see when i go out into the wild is you'll see that that particular species of turtle will line itself up in current and pick it algae and little plants on the bottom and that's exactly what they're doing in your backyard yeah but in my backyard so this is a dream come true huh buddy yeah i never ever would have imagined that this actually could happen or be possible when i wake up in the morning first place i go at night i'll come down here at 11 12 o'clock at night with a flashlight and watch what you know what everybody's up to and i mean my day revolves you know around this thing and it's fantastic so you remember this guy from before is this the one we were holding yeah this is bullet tooth tony he's the one that was shot in the head somebody caught him fishing and for whatever reason i think they thought that the thing to do was to try and shoot him i found him and all of this was just blown to pieces really but and it's amazing how adaptable there he survived yeah oh i could see the depression right there yeah right there and that affected the musculature for a while it affected his like orientation and things like that but so how long have you had bulletproof tony three or four years now okay and uh he's been just a you know a success story for as far as you know saving this guy and healing a wound that seems you know pretty traumatic luckily their brain is really tiny in about right there and then the rest of this is just all the brain is where is right between the eyes right it's a little teeny tiny thing i knew it was tidy and you would never do this with a common snapper that's just that close that common snapper would quickly yes but a alligator snapper has a little worm appendage in there and they just wait and so they will only strike when really provoked they're not going to be aggressive like a common snapper right so he lives in the pond i built over there for alligator snapping turtles but a lot of times males when it rains really heavy in floods we'll try to like walk around to expand territory yeah more shallow areas and the first time he got out of there and found the aquascape pond he decided he liked it so much he just keeps going there all the time so if i get like a big rainstorm i have to come out here in the middle of the night and pull him out of oxygen so he could climb out of his enclosure yeah yeah and i learned that quickly that he can climb out of there so but he only comes out when it's a rainy night yeah yeah it has to be like really heavy rain like flooding will be what does it and then he goes to the aquascape pond i don't blame them so this is the wetland filter the water flows up through all that gravel all those plant roots and we get crystal clear water as you can see so i love the fact that noah is here 18 year old kid that reminds me of myself when i was his age and i could task him with starting a turtle rescue at aquascape and aqualand people are always bringing us turtles mostly red ear turtles that their kids have had since they were little and now they're going to college or something but i really want to do more for a conservation standpoint so interacting with people like greg who's created a you know absolute paradise for turtles out here and learning from them and then how they've done it and then giving a young guy like noah who wants to be a vet someday the opportunity to actually work at aquascape and create environment for turtles to live that's species pacific that's habitat specific that's what i really want to get to and this is my hobby this is my passion to be able to have friends like greg that know what they're doing and camp kennen and brian barczyk and jay brewer and all of the people that aquascape has worked with over the years it's just an absolute pleasure this is what makes my job fun doing is interacting with cool people doing cool things i love my job you

Channel: Greg Wittstock, The Pond Guy

Views: 180,240

Rating: 4.9469242 out of 5

Keywords: Aquascape, Ponds, Certified Aquascape Contractor, pond installation, Greg Wittstock, Greg Wittstock The Pond Guy, turtle pond, pond turtles, turtles, snapping turtles, alligator snapping turtle, pond animals, backyard pond, koi pond, tortoise

Id: QBZk6VchLRM

Length: 15min 56sec (956 seconds)

Published: Wed Jul 21 2021