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500 Gallon Alligator Snapping Turtle Display Tank

By The Glass Box on

0:00:00.0 Speaker 1: What's up, everybody? I'm Mike and this is The Glass Box. Today, let's go over my entire setup from top to bottom for my alligator snapping turtle. It's a pretty unique setup. No time to waste, so let's get started.

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0:00:43.5 Speaker 1: Okay. Let's start at the top. These are Amazon aquarium light-hanging kit. These cables you see that are hanging, these black bars, the mounting bars which are just 2 x 4's. I used a router to smooth those 2 x 4's out a little bit. I have some zip ties for cable management. The lights are Noopsyche K7 PRO IIs. They are excessive. They're not needed, but this is a display tank, so I basically want the best light I can, and they also give me that shimmer. Next we have my cable tray. This gray box you see is a cable tray, part of my cable management system. It houses AC adapters or power packs, whatever you wanna call them. It has some extension cords, and all the other wiring that basically you don't know what to do with. It's all hidden in there. It's a bit of an eyesore, but it looks better than having the wires all over the place. So that's my cable management system. It's like a few extension cords and all the wiring for the K7 PRO IIs. Next we have the glass lids. I have six glass lids or three parts. You know each section contains two glass pieces which controls the humidity, so I have... You know you will have problems with humidity with a tank this big, so this pretty much fixes my humidity problems altogether. Okay?

0:02:54.2 S1: And it does take away from some of the lighting of course with all that condensation or whatever, but you know if I really wanna get a good shot, I'll remove the glass just to get some good you know color or whatever, if I'm filming. The tank itself is a Custom Aquariums 500-gallon fish tank. The dimensions are 84 long, 30 inches high, 48 inches deep. It's a peninsula-style tank, three-sides viewable, of course. The glass thickness is 5/8. Glass clarity, regular glass clarity. I didn't wanna spend the extra money for 3/4 inch. It wasn't needed, or I didn't wanna spend the extra money for UltraClear glass. This is just a turtle. Maybe if it was a reef tank, I probably woulda stepped up my game a little bit, but I'm happy with it. Clarity is fine. I love the tank. Here is my air stone/heater. Okay, I have two temperature probes tucked behind there. It's mounted with suction cups that I came up in zip ties. I drilled out those holes. The air stone is basically at the bottom. I have it hanging on. You know there's a zip tie there so it doesn't fall through. It's like a two-inch air stone or something like that. It's pretty big. I don't know if you can see it. It's at the bottom though. I have two of these air stones in the tank.

0:04:35.2 S1: The heater, a titanium heater, is in there, two 300-watt titanium heater. Basically, I'm trying to make it turtle-proof, but she's found a way to tear it down already. That's my intake tube, that leaning tube, that black tube there, the first one. Hard pipe inside the tank. The turtle has moved them, of course. Nothing is glued together, it's just pushed together there. The fittings are just hand-tight. I didn't wanna glue them because I may have to change them up or remove them. Intake's on the outside. The output's up high so it gives me some surface agitation. Surface agitation also helps give me that shimmer that you see on that wood piece, that shimmer there. Okay? So the LED lights, the Noopsyche, when you see that shimmer, not all LED lights do that. But Noopsyche, they're similar to Kessils, they're the cheap version of Kessils, if you're familiar with Kessils. If not, get familiar. Lights are extremely excessive. They're not needed at all. I'm not growing anything. No benefit to the turtle at all, it's just basically for visual effects.

0:06:03.7 S1: Getting back to the outputs there also too, it also breaks up some of the you know the surface you know... They call it protein scum or anything that's on top of the water. Okay? And also that's where you know your water, your oxygen exchange is, at the top of the tank so... Not that a turtle needs it that much, but you know I like to keep the water highly oxygenated. Here's the other heater. There's no air stone in there with this heater, it's just black PVC pipe. I just wanna hide the black cords or anything that the turtle can bite. It is a titanium heater. I'm not worried about the heater element itself, but they will bite off the ends of the heater, any plastic in there. I've had my turtle before bite off the ends of a titanium heater, the cords, anything that it can bite, it will. Okay? Expect it to be bitten, especially on a larger turtle. It doesn't matter so much when they're smaller, but as they gain size, it doesn't take much for them to destroy, bite, eat or just be destructive.

0:07:40.8 S1: Here's the other air stone. As you can see there, the airline tubing comes up, up there, and it's routed by suction cups, all the way around to the back of the tank. But inside the tank I have probably goat shrimp, just a mosquito fish, crayfish, there are some tadpoles or too maybe bullfrog tadpoles. I don't know what's left of the tadpoles. I don't know what's left of the crayfish. I've seen about a couple of crayfish left, but that's all that's in the tank. Just one turtle, one turtle. The turtle, basically, is the only thing I really care about. Everything else is just for visual, you know to add some movement to the tank, the mosquito fish and some other things, but other than that, only thing I care about keeping is my princess.

0:08:44.6 S1: Almost all the driftwood is loose. The turtle move it around at will, so I'm not scaping or anything like that. I just let the turtle do whatever. She moves around everything, except for these two big pieces right here. They are mounted to a big piece of slate on the bottom that I purchased. More thing about the driftwood, I have these two pieces coming up right here. I have that screwed in, too I used stainless screws to screw in some of the driftwood to give that little arching effect just for a resting spot for the turtle. Sometimes she will go up there and just post up and just rest, basically. So she'll have her neck out sticking out the water and just laying up there so she doesn't have to reach up. So I just wanted a spot where she can just you know be higher on the surface that she can just pretty much you know chill out, so that's the purpose of that arching, those little horns or whatever you see with the driftwood. And it actually works. I come down, especially at night, she'll be up there just hanging out, sometimes her head fully out of the water, just chilling.

0:10:00.6 S1: The reason why I chose to put this slate and this rock on the bottom is strictly for the alligator snapper. It's nails basically... Before I put them in the tank, nails were a little bit longer. They do help with wearing down the turtle's nails, if not you can take the turtle out and file them down or step them yourself. Here is the backside of my filtration setup. One-inch bulkheads, also from Bulk Reef Supply. I have a 91-inch... I guess that's gonna be for... It's a barb tubing. It's also threaded on that side, goes down to my two Fluval FX6s. Okay? I have two Fluval FX6s and that's it. I have two Fluval FX6s. They are pretty much enough for a tank. I only have one turtle. I don't have a whole lot going on, but they are pretty messy, and it creates enough water movement that it's not too much for the turtle, is enough for filtration. I do have to stir up the water and the gravel once a week just to get all that stuff. I do not like Fluval's tubing. It's very fragile, it restricts water flow with all the ridges in the tubing, if you know that. So if you can hard-pipe it or use pond tubing... I wish I'd used black pond tubing, but I was being cheap and went to Home Depot. This is an 8-foot stand, 7-foot long tank, so I have a foot here of space that I used to drill my tubing. I created those holes that go straight down to the filtration.

0:11:53.3 S1: That's my noisy air pump. I need to change my air pump. It's very noisy. I'm running two big air stones, which I showed you covered by PVC, black PVC inside the tank. Stand is made by me, made out of 2 x 4's, 4 x 4's, 2 x 6's. Okay 2 x 6's... Only have two doors on the backside of the stand. It's wrapped in a black gloss car wrap. Like a you know a regular car wrap. It's okay. I wish I would have used maybe melamine as the wood and then came back and wrapped it. I could have got a smoother wrap. There are some wrinkles in it. I never used car wrap before, but it'll do. I may wind up redoing the wrap, but it looks good. It looks okay. It looks okay. Alright, I only have two doors to access my two FX6s on each side of the tank. Let me go right to that right now and show you what that looks like. Those are my Fluval FX6s. So these are my Fluvals. I've got two of them running, one there, one there, and they come up as I showed you before, through the stand, four hole saw holes and just brought them down here. Well, that's pretty much it for my tank. If you guys have any questions or something I missed, or you want me to go in detail about anything, you can hit me up and I'll gladly respond to any questions? It's pretty simplistic, you know what I mean? It's just pretty basic. Very excessive though. There's no... You can take care of these turtles a lot cheaper, you know what I mean? But this is a display tank and what I chose to do. Do you.

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Mike Toppin's channel (The Glass Box) is dedicated to the aquarium and reptile keeping hobby

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