A Classroom tank

[littleronin]

Ok my wife has the idea to set up a tank in her classroom. Today she came home after talking with some of the other teachers and they put the idea of a combination land/river ecosystem type thing.

The way she was explaining it to me was like that.

About a 1/3 of the tank would be land, where she could have a turtle or some other reptile/amphibian. The other 2/3s would be a river type after with some fish.

First off, can this be done? If so, recommendations for species to put in it. Second off if it cant be, I need reasons why, because once she has an idea in her head I need all my facts straight if I plan on talking her out of it.

Also she teaches 1st grade and the idea came around so she could have a classroom pet(s).

[Waylander]

I think it possibly could work. But it would be alot easier to do the two in two seperate tanks.

I have no experience with turtles (They're banned in my state of Australia) or other reptiles as a rule, and only very limited experience with amphibians. But from what I hear you will need a reasonably large tank just for the turtle. It may be unwise to go for any other sort of reptile as it's possible they may end up drowning.

So for starters you would need quite a large tank, I'm thinking something in the order of 100 gallons. This is to provide room for the turtle and also fish, because there is no way you will be able to fill the tank all the way up, probably only half full to two thirds full.

Other people should be able to help more with matching species of turtle with species of fish. Just be careful your tank doesn't end up being a real eco-system and the turtle makes a snack of your fish :).

I personally would try to persuade your wife to go with just an aquarium. Alot less trouble, especially if she has no experience with reptiles and only limited experience with fish to begin with.

DISCLAIMER: I have no real idea if any of this is correct. I stress that I have NO experience with reptiles myself. This is just my two cents. Please don't make any decisions on my two cents alone. :)

[TropicalNorth]

I'm with Waylander on this one. I kept a turtle for a fair while and looking after him was job enough, let alone if he was in with fish.

For a classroom a good idea would be to have say 15G to 20G tank (easiest to care for IMO) and maybe separate tank with frogs. The frogs would be kept in a Vivarium (not sure the difficulty level of this).

If it were me I'd start off with an aquarium with livebearers (or similar) and if that works out go for something more challenging.

[Waylander]

Definitely agreed, TN.

A 15 gallon to 20 gallon aquarium would be the best starter project. For a class room tank I agree with TN, livebearers are the way to go (they have bright colours and you can teach the kids about reproduction at the same time lol :)) and maybe some cory cats.

I've been looking into keeping frogs myself. However they seem to be more difficult than fish to keep. They must have live food, which ideally needs to be dusted in calcium/vitamen powder to ensure the health of the frogs. They also need quite a large tank, with a very, very secure lid. There is also the downside that most frogs are nocturnal, only coming outside during the day to bask in sunlight, for vitamen d and other good stuff. I'm still determined to keep them one day though.

[littleronin]

I run this all by her tomorrow. From what Im understanding. It sounds like the school wants to use her classroom as the school science project. Because they found out about our love for fish and just about every other animal out there (we have a small zoo here on top of the 6 fish tanks, we have many species of lizards and snakes. We have never had a turtle). But other teachers and the administration have been pushing her to bring that love into the classroom. Hence they came up with that idea.

[jm1212]

Marineland makes a tank that is specialized for this. i forget what it is called, but it is a 28 gallon tank with 2/3 land and 1/3 water, and there is plenty of room for some frogs and then some smaller tetras.