Pond Boss Forums POND CONSTRUCTION Creating habitat Built a floating platform for the Turtles *PICS*

Citydad I would would be building it for sure then. Prolly have 2 go a lil beefier tho. Could make for some cool action shots.

Wow very impressive! I love the spiny softshell! I might not grab a hold of one but neat to look at.
I too have a couple floating islands. It's amazing to me at what a distance painted turtles sense my presence and crawl back into the water.

Gators are yuuuuuuuuuge pests.
Trust you dont want em around AND I can't even kill them bc they are somehow still endangered even though there are probably more gators than people in florida

SSS rule applies.

We had one gator we had to get removed. We actually liked seeing it it but a couple neighbors have dogs and were scared it would eventually snag one. We've never been kept up all night by a barking gator so we are a bit biased on which one should have been removed.

[img]https://www.mediafire.com/view/8l9t...698715018_3623536617720460041_n.jpg/file[/img]

The Softshells have sharp teeth but everything outside their mouths are pretty harmless.

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Last year we started getting a few damaged turtles with missing legs and eventually figured out we had a snapping turtle in the pond. We weren't positive thst it was her but I trapped and relocated her to be safe and all the incidents went away. Sadly we lost a few of our big females before the issue was resolved.
We called her Lillith and found her weakness to be strawberries. I baited her with every nasty concoction in the book and she never responded to anything until we set out a handfull of fresh strawberries.

[img]https://www.mediafire.com/view/lsfl...502374805_3359897470762047243_n.jpg/file[/img]

We get lots of other visitors as well and the cameras make sure we never miss a good thing.

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Tht last picture is really cool. Iv never seem an image of a turtle actually shedding or whatever it's called in them. Thank you very much for sharing. What kind of camera system do you have setup.

Thank you, I wish I could figure out how to get the pics to embed properly though.

I use Reolink 8MP IP cameras. Once they caught on to how I was using them, they actually made me a beta tester and send me free cameras to play with all the time.
We have over 19 cameras including a couple 8MP PTZ's for patrolling the pond and then the 2 on the platform itself.
I originally had 1080P WiFi cams fitted with solar panels and IR motion detection but they would always time out and you would miss great shots. I upgraded more than a few times over the last 3 years after running a pair of waterproof Cat6 cables out with POE so I could record 24/7 and never miss a second.


[img]https://www.mediafire.com/view/0rf0...230245536_8793178577660018688_n.jpg/file[/img]

Heres the last picture.

Great thread and great pics!! Are many of those turtles a slider of some kind?

The bulk of ours are Yellow Bellied Sliders with a few Florida Softshells and the one Common Snapping Turtle.

Agree about the pic of the turtle shedding. I didn’t know they did that.

Can you post or direct message your design and fabrication details for this floating turtle dock? This is the best design I've seen yet and the cameras are a great idea!