How to Make a *TURTLE POND HABITAT*

hey what's up everybody ed the pond professor here I am coming to you from Rockville and I'm gonna give you a little bit of an update Greg and I were over at a customer's house he has Midland painted turtles that lay eggs on his property bob has since watched them over the years she puts in these cages going over the top of the nest we went out there we dug up some of these nests right when the turtles were hatching we brought some of these babies back and I'm going to show you a little bit of what we're gonna be creating for them throughout the day today all right so you're in for a treat with this one here we are we're in our retail store here are the baby turtles they are doing fantastic right now you can see they're getting very active they're growing quickly by the day we're feeding them high protein diet right now because this is the time that they need to gain mass we're going to create a bigger tank for these guys and that is gonna happen right back over on this area this is gonna become home to these Turtles for the next six months or so until springtime and then we're gonna release them into the wild got this big tank got a really cool stump I have our filtration system so this has the pressure filter it also has a pump and it has tubing I have some river rock I also got some cool little stones and stuff like that to decorate things up and I have some aqua blocks I also have some of these drainage cells and some filter pads and things like that I'm going to set this tank up over in this area get a new light they're gonna give them better water quality and the space that they need because of who we are people are always contacting us and bringing us Turtles kind of becoming almost like a little turtle rescue facility and that's because we have the facility port and we talk about a lot of time drag is always talking about his love of turtles and that's how we got into the business so people hear this and they bring us their turtles that are getting a little bit too big so this is some of the challenges that we have what I like about what we're doing with this new tank is we're gonna release him back into the wild these turtles that have been given to us have been brought up in captivity their entire lives they probably would not make it too long in nature so we want to do is set these new Turtles up in this tank have them kind of grow on their own get them strong enough give them a little bit of a head start and then they'll be a to be released into the wild and springtime so I got my aqua blocks built I love the elevation that it brought it up to kind of matches up with the existing turtle tank over there my filter box here we have our tubing we have our pump and we have our filter now this filter is a little bit overkill citizen ultra pond mm filter technically designed for a 2000 gallon pond but we do want to have low maintenance we want to make sure that the water is pristine for the baby turtles they're used to high water quality and this is going to deliver that for us so I've opened up the pressure filter and inside there are bags of these bio balls so what these do basically is they create surface area for the beneficial bacteria and enzymes to colonize if you look at this stuff the way these are designed is they just have lots of these little fins and stuff on them there every square millimeter is gonna be covered with bacterias enzymes biofilms and things like that which is actually going to detoxify the water so that's an important component the other thing we want to do is we want to add water in here which is going to allow us to position the top piece back on top and that's because we have to allow water to kind of flow in through this entire system and then back out so here's the top assembly we have water flowing in through this guy here water comes out hits this diffuser plate which spreads the water out the water then is going to go through the bio media and then it comes back in contact with the UV sterilization unit now I don't like using these all the time but in this application that does make sense because we're trying to create a really good environment this is an aqua force pump nice thing about this this is designed for in pond use you can see how it has this cage going around everything this is going to protect the actual pump from getting debris inside of it so all the water that goes through in and around this is going to get brought in to the volute cavity and then it's going to get discharged over here this is going to connect up to our plumbing which is going to go to our pressure filter which is going to be located on the other side so I installed the discharge piece and as you could see here it is a really nice tight fit there is no way an animal is going to get in and around that so I feel very comfortable with it so now my next step is gonna be to adept this fitting into our little swing elbow here so you could have the discharge go out at any different angle so what I like about that is it's going to allow me to get up and over the edge of the tub over here so I like the position of the stump problem is this pump here so what I'm gonna do is I got my sawzall right over here I'm gonna cut some of these roots and things out of the backside just to tuck that in in this back corner pump is positioned I have my main inch and 1/2 line coming out you have an in you have an out and then this is waste so you can have you have a cleaning cycle etc so I'm gonna hook up this later but that will be for back flushing the filter what I'm gonna do is I'm going to take this discharge and kind of plastic way over here and the reason I want to do that water's gonna get sucked in underneath all of this stuff and then this discharge is gonna kind of shoot out over here what I want to try to do is kind of create a swirling action by having a little bit of a flow that allows them to swim against a current so this is really good for them because it builds up those muscles the muscle memory they could get increased strength from swimming up against a current versus just in a stagnant body of water [Music] so I got my plumbing in discharge out creating that swirling area this is gonna be a deeper zone so these are what we call flow cells for drainage panels they allow water to move in all directions through them we use them on a lot of different applications they have a really strong load bearing capacity but here what I'm trying to do is just create an area where water can still flow through getting over to our pumps but I'm going to do on top of that is I'm going to cover it up I have some filter pads over there and cut the filter pads to kind of fit inside all of this stuff as the water gets discharged from here all that water has to get drawn through the filter media before it gets back over to the pump so that's gonna act this secondary biological filtration force as well as mechanical it's gonna pull out of a lot of fine sediments and things like that and now what I'm doing is I'm going in I'm literally trying to fill in every little crack and crevice because I don't want those little turtles getting stuck inside of there so my next step I'm gonna come in with my waterfall foam there's an expandable polyurethane foam it has carbon black added to it's also a minimal expansion foam it doesn't ooze out all over the place if you've ever used like a great stuff or something like that this is a lot easier to work with we're gonna try to fill in some of these other little gaps that are difficult to fill in with the filter pad and I just want to block all those little cavities and entrances the turtles might get into [Music] so if progress is really coming along on this project we're trying to replicate the actual area where the turtles came from Bob crosses property he's got logs he's got stumps he's got aquatic vegetation he's got an island out in the middle of it he's got deep zones he's got these big long shallow beachy bank areas that come on in and all that stuff is the perfect habitat for these Turtles which is why they're breeding so readily there and that's exactly what we're trying to do here so the stump obviously is a focal point but it's also going to provide little basking areas to explore to climb to to look for and search for natural food sources and we're gonna mount a light up on the top of this it's gonna hang out and it's gonna kind of create a hotspot over here on top of this rock I chose a dark rock this is a sedimentary stone so this is gonna soak up moisture so as that water wicks up into this natural stone all that moss and all the lichens and stuff like that will continue to grow but what that also will do is it's going to provide a nice warm but yet a moist environment you can see this is also set on a slope so there's going to be different levels of water and dryness on top of that which is exactly what happens in natural systems remember that was our entire goal with this but we didn't want to capture turtles just for the sake of capturing turtles we want to help repopulate the area because there's a big problem out there the problem is declining habitats water quality issues stormwater runoff there's all types of predation and some of these are natural factors obviously but others are not others are man-made so what we want to do is give them a little bit of a helping hand and we want to try to give them a good head start so they could help to repopulate the natural populations these back areas or my areas of concern so I phoned all this stuff in creating a barrier turtles are not going to be able to get inside of the area where the pump is located this section is going to be our open water area we will have some aquatic vegetation I will also probably reutilize that stump I mean these things are super super versatile so I've been chopping pieces out of it super super heavy-duty but I love the way that looks so what we'll be able to do is we'll be able to cut to manipulate that to put it in place behind this other log now I have a big joint over here I don't just want to use foam there I had a couple of these pieces of cut off from our stump right here so I'm just gonna screw those things in place and then the little joints I'll come in and I'll foam the rest of that open water deep zone you could see this is exactly what you're gonna find in nature it's not just one big deep cavity we're gonna have multiple areas I'm starting to finish up the gravel foam is all set dried it's gonna start layering in different layers of gravel don't want to use too much of the big stuff I'm just going to try to use some of that bigger gravel where some of these bigger elevation changes are just because they'll hold that position a little bit better so I'm gonna do that next [Music] so I have the Riverstone in place so now the next step is going to be to wash everything down so I brought in some other bigger pieces of stone the two inch river rock was not holding on some of those elevation changes so a couple of these flatter skinny pieces are really doing the job for me also kind of breaks up in the monotony of all this river stone in the bottom a lot of different areas for different depths of water so next step wash it down get the pumps running and then start adding in some of the aquatic vegetation and then finally the turtles I want to make sure I have good flow going through the entire system it's drawing that water back through this little beach area over towards our pumps same thing over our back on this side so I think we're gonna have a good overall circulation good water quality in general you can see the pump does not have to be completely submerged and that's because the intake to the pump it's probably about two inches below this Ridge over on this side pressure filter seems to be holding finally and then here we have our our UV settings might have it on twelve hours right now this is our back flush so we could take that to drain if we need to grab in a few plants kind of the end of the season he hit some iris they had some bloody dr. Atala banana pulled some pothos out of some of the other tanks and I'm just gonna start tucking these in strategically in and around the area making sure I leave plenty of room for turtles to kind of wander around but I also want to create some little grazing areas for him [Music] success everything's done everything's operational I got the light mounted over the rock pump is running I got some moss in here got pothos they got iris I think we got a nice little habitat lots of open space we got warm zones deep water zones over on that side plenty of spaces for them to climb and crawl we have protection in and around our pump multiple barriers so they can't get in next steps are going to be released a turtle I got to get Greg involved with this and that's the whole reason the aquascape started in the beginning Greg is the passionate environmental guy grew up with little baby turtles which got him into the whole pond hobby I mean you look around here we got turtle habitats all over the place and this latest one for these little guys is perfect for us and the beauty of all this stuff is this stuff could be created at home I mean using a few simple technologies creating the right little atmosphere forms we don't want to keep these guys long-term like these other ones that have been raised in captivity we want to release them back into the wild to help repopulate some of the native populations so this is an important component [Music] I am so excited I just got back from out of town Bob is kind of a hero to me because when I was a kid I went to his pet shop Noah's Ark ketchup I went to one of them in the mall but I've been growing out Turtles in my backyard forever they turtles come in they lay eggs but I've never actually kept them over in the winter time I got inspired by Bob to do that so I have not seen the tank that had created for all my little zoo back here but I'm going to see it for the first time are they the cutest things ever or what so almost all these are Bob's a few of these are from my house okay let's go take them back oh yeah of course that's gonna do a perfect gap they're gonna love this basking rock okay let's put these guys in here oh that is the cutest [Music] what a perfect little habitat it never gets old there's always something to do here you know and it's not just about me being able to come out here but all of the kids all of the people they can learn about Midland Paper Turtles when these get eight months old next spring we're gonna release them take these guys to the forest preserves and everything else maybe you know what maybe we'll actually get a school to deal with us because I think it'd be great to educate future generations because kids need to be spending more time in nature and less time on electronics [Applause] [Music]

Channel: Ed The Pond Professor

Views: 419,144

Rating: 4.9247661 out of 5

Keywords: turtle, turtle pond, turtle habitat, diy turtle pond, diy turtle habitat, indoor turtle pond, Ed Beaulieu, The Pond Professor, Aquascape, Greg Wittstock, The Pond Guy

Id: DWpZNgFIB6I

Length: 14min 24sec (864 seconds)

Published: Sat Oct 19 2019