Building outside turtle pond
- Thread starter nickolbag
- Start date
A short ( 12" or so ) chicken wire fence would darn near be invisible unless you were right next to it.
Over the years I've found that turtles will try to escape from wire fencing that they can't put their head through. Wire fencing that has large openings in it seems to work best. The turtle can sort of fit the front half of it's body through but not enough to escape. This confuses the turtle and basically makes it back up and begin to learn the perimeter of the enclosure. I use green garden fence as it looks nicer and works well at keeping my turtles contained. They have never once tried to climb or borrow out of my setup. The only downside to this type of fencing for me is that squirrels can get in and dig up the eggs and when the eggs that make it hatch, the babies can get out.
Here's a close up of the fencing.
Here's a close up of the fencing.
I was going to use bricks to wrap a nice brick wall around it. I figured I can make a large top out of wood and some kind of wire to lay over the top to keep animals out. When I am around I can just flip the top off, when I'm not around its easy enough to flip back on. I know the bricks will be a lot more than a simple wire fence but it will look a lot nicer and provide a nice seat to enjoy the pond!
It was actually the other way around, the larger red ear female was harassing the yellow belly male. The male yellow belly was harassing the smaller eastern painted and the smallest of them all(eastern painted) was harassing the largest one(red ear). I hope building this large pond will keep the peace. I plan on having plenty of areas for them to come out and bask along with a good amount of land to come up on.
New bricks can run you anywhere from $0.43 - $0.69 each. Used sometimes cheaper and sometimes more. Any idea as to how large an area you are going to have to surround?? The cost can skyrocket.
Drawing it out I think I will run a front and back wall from my patio screen to the fence. If I do that I will have about 37' of wall. If I add side walls instead of running it to the screen I figure about another 20'. I was also going to use the wall stones and not a standard brick, so cost will be a lot more per piece.
Also, with the space I figure I can get 1500-1700 gallons of water. Enough area to keep the peace?
Sounds like a plan. Hard to say not knowing the dimensions of the pond and only the volume, but I would think it would be ok. Remember you will need some deep water as well to keep out predators.
I was going to go around 30" at its deepest. I am thinking a pond somewhere in the 15' x 15' range. Actually, that may come out to more gallons than I initially thought.
