Tank Profile Terrapin Tank with Algae Turf Scrubber and Ghost Overflow

Hello!!!

I have two rescued Diamondback Terrapins. If you don't know much about them, they are the only turtles that live exclusively in brackish water. I keep their water at 1.018 salinity. I've had them about a year now, and they grow pretty fast. The female will grow another 4 or 5 inches in shell length, and the male probably only another inch or so.

My female is Louie. She's a Concentric Diamondback Terrapin and has a lighter shell color and white skin with black spots. The male, Taylor, is a Northern Diamondback Terrapin and has both darker skin and shell coloring. Though they are two different variations, they actually came from almost exactly the same area. Yes, the names are a little weird, but it's hard to tell their sex until they are about 6 months old. Taylor the Terrapin came to me first, and I decided on a somewhat unisex name. Louie came to me next and already had a name. Unfortunately, she had barely grown because her previous owner knew nothing about the lighting, water and tank requirements for turtles. That's a long story in and of itself. Suffice to say that she should be much bigger than the male since they are the same age, but this is how big she was when I rescued her from her "rescuer."



For a while, I had her in a 10 gallon tank and him in a 20 gallon tank. Small, yes, but definitely temporary.




I've used a Bean Animal and an Algae Turf Scrubber since day one.





I know a 40 breeder would be the next logical upgrade step, but why spend the money to upgrade when that's only a temporary solution? So, I decided to do it right and get a big tank...

 

So, I got the tank home and got to work...



Here's the original idea I was working from. It would have been 4' square, 30" tall, and a nightmare to build.



I got to work on something a lot more practical. I did the sump first, and yes, the silicone is messy!



Then on to the tank beach and ramp...









Got my early Christmas present with everything I needed to finish the build, except... my overflow and hole saws! I knew Reef Savvy would come through any day though, so I go to work on other things.

 

Plants!

My Turtle Grass, Shoal Grass and mangrove pods showed up along with Mineral Mud, Florida Keys mud, live Keys sand and live golden sand. Picked them up from John at FloridaPets.com. Believe me, they rock! Still no overflow and saws, so letting everything chill in the sump for now, lol.







4
DJ Electron
Registered Member



Join Date: Apr 2015
Posts: 3

Ghost Overflow!
FINALLY! My Ghost showed up! This thing is awesome!

 

Getting there...



First day cloudiness



Day 2



Day 3



Happy Turtles



The sump is almost finished. Still waiting on 2 more LED bulbs for the scrubber, so I have two regular plant bulbs in there temporarily. A big THANK YOU to TURBO for his ideas advice! After running the scrubber on my old tank for a year, I have learned a lot. This design I think will serve me well, and is totally based on the L3. You can't see it from the pics, but I have a 1-1/4" pipe with a big slot cut from end to end covering the actual 3/4" slot pipe that is holding my screen. This is a good light blocker and something I learned on my old scrubber design. I think once I get the last two bulbs I will install something to help block light coming out the back. We'll see...

 

Thanks! I owe a lot of my successes with my tanks to you, your ideas and your forum!!!

 

I was going to paint the ends of the scrubber black. I have a little thing of black acrylic paint from the crafts section. That's a good idea on the plastic for the shroud... My screen is 10.5" x 8" giving me an 84 sq. in. screen, so I should be good for 7 cubes a day, right?

 

My tank has been doing great! Nitrates are consistently low and the scrubber grows like crazy! Every week I pull about a cup of algae off the screens. I have 4x 24w grow lights working now on a 20 on, 4 off schedule. Everyone really is doing great in the tank.

I posted this also on ReefCentral in the Maintaining a Slope of sand? thread, but I also wanted to post my new dilemma/idea here.

Hi,

So I've been mulling over how to put a beach and tides in an aquarium for a long time. I'm curious to hear your thoughts.

I currently have a tank for my two male diamondback terrapin turtles. My girlfriend and I (we might have a better title sometime very soon) are moving in together soon. She has a female terrapin, and sine they grow to double the size of males, the tank will be way undersized.

The current tank is a 120g 4'x2'x2' with a 1'x2'x6" beach section and ramp. I keep the SG at 1.018. I have a deep sand bed, 15 pounds of live rock, all manner of CUC, and a bunch of mollies. They breed like crazy, and sometimes end up on the turtle's menu. There is a ReefSavyy Ghost Overflow with 1" Bean Animal drain system to my 40 Breeder sump. I have a DIY Algae Scrubber made from a 2.5g aquarium on a plywood base with 4x 24 Watt LED Grow Lights. The ATS pump is a AquaMedic 1.2 DC pump from an old tank. The main return is an AquaMedic 3.0 DC Pump. They're great: controllable flow, quiet, and efficient.

The tank is too small to add a 3rd turtle, and I have this annoying issue where the turtles bring a little sand from the beach into the water with them every time they jump in. So, how do I replenish the sand on the beach naturally? I think waves and a real beach will do it.



Waves lapping gently up on a beach help to replenish the sand there in the real world. Only very rough waves from storms erode the sand. I think a little wave action will keep the slope intact and the turtles happy. If waves will do that for my turtles, then tides will keep my mangroves happy too. They're not shown in the diagrams, but I will plant them on the back side of the tank between the high and low tide lines.

So, here are my plans for my new, ridiculous tank. I'm going to need a better job for sure...

This thing is big because I need a lot of gallons for these growing turtles, but I think this will scale well for anyone that wants to do it. It's a drop off, because I wanted to have some deep water without having the sand slope over the length of the tank. The tank is 10' long, 4' wide and 4' deep with a 40" water depth. The deep section is 3' long with 1.5' of shallow, 4' of slope and 1.5' of dry sand. The two stacked overflows allow for 6" of water to drain out, creating the low tide.





I have a glass box with Tunze pumps and a wave controller on the end of the tank pointing directly at the beach. That gets the waves moving. The outlets are just above the height of the shallow area of the tank and are low enough that they stay submerged at low tide.



The plumbing looks complicated, but it really isn't. Just think of is as two separate tanks with different water levels, each with an overflow and return pump.



The lower overflow is tuned so that it matches the output of the main pump. It has two pipes which are under full siphon at all times. It is backed up by the high tide Ghost Overflow with Bean Animal drains.



When it's time for the tide to ebb, the solenoid valve opens, and water drains out of the additional drain at a tuned rate of 15 gph for 6 hours and 12.5 minutes. That will drain the 90 gallons out, creating the low tide.



When it's time for the tide to come back in, the ebb tide drain solenoid valve closes, and the flood tide pump turns on. It's not pictured, but I should have a backflow preventer on this line to stop a siphon from draining the high tide when the pump turns off. Yes, it's lossy, but I only need to pump 15 gph back into the tank to get to the high tide mark over the same 6 hours. There is a T and valve to send the pump's excess flow back into the sump.

When the tide is in, the water level reaches the top overflow. Since the lower overflow handles all of the main pump's flow, the main leg of the Bean Animal only needs to flow 15gph. I will have the backup and emergency sized to handle all of the pumps flow each on their own.



The sump has to be 200 gallons or so so that I can handle the 90g tides as well as regular filtration. I'm glad to be a big fan and current happy Algae Turf Scrubber user, and I use it here. It's nice to not have to have a dedicated, constant water-level section in the sump for a skimmer taking up tide water space. Besides, my bioload is very low compared to the number of total gallons, and these algae scrubbers (in conjunction with my sea grasses, mangroves and DSB) will do wonders for filtration.



Very long winded, I know. I've been thinking about this forever though, and would love to know what you all think.

 

Okay... Reality says that the tank can't be 4' front to back. As nice as that would be, I don't have a room big enough to dedicate half to a ridiculous tank, lol. I am going to make a tank like this a reality, so... I will reduce the width to either 24" or 30" so that it can fit through doors and cut down weight. That will reduce everything by either 40% or 50%. The cost savings are definitely important, too.

Does anyone have experience with a wavebox? Does it require the wave energy bouncing off the far wall to help maintain the wave height? Since my beach will absorb 80% or 90% of the return energy, will it be able to create much of a wave? I figure only a one or two inch high wave at the beach will be ideal.