I have a question on substrate for my turtle tank. My turtles have grown so much, that the river rocks we were using are too small. They are able to eat them now. I don't want to have a bare tank bottom since they can't grip on glass. Any suggestions would be most helpful! Thanks!!

__________________
<3 Tessa

0.0.2 painted turtles (Mo and Squirt)
1.0.0 yellow bellied slider (Jebidiah)
0.1.0 Amelanistic corn snake (Rose)
1.0.0 Hog Island/Colombian Boa (Kah)
0.2.0 Colombian Boa (Jasmine) and her baby(no name yet)
1.0.0 Suriname Boa (Kayne)
0.2.0 Cats (Lilly and Reese)

I use large river rocks for my Terrapin. They're a bit larger than his head. Try to find something that you KNOW they can't swallow.

__________________
Ken
" The United States Marine Corps......sure we are a department of the Navy,,,,,,we're the MENS department "

They don't need to be able to grip to the bottom of the tank. Bare bottoms are great because it allows for more swim room and a cleaner tank. Gravel/river rocks trap a lot of their poop and it sinks down to where you can't see it. If you don't want it completely bare, you can have a handful of river rocks scattered around. Another thing that seems to be growing in popularity is sand. It's clean, the poop doesn't settle below it and once it settles after you put it in the tank, it looks really nice. You just have to be careful about what kind you pick.

Will they not get impacted if they eat the sand? And what kind of sand should be used? I'll probably place large rocks along the bottom of the tank since I already have those.

__________________
<3 Tessa

0.0.2 painted turtles (Mo and Squirt)
1.0.0 yellow bellied slider (Jebidiah)
0.1.0 Amelanistic corn snake (Rose)
1.0.0 Hog Island/Colombian Boa (Kah)
0.2.0 Colombian Boa (Jasmine) and her baby(no name yet)
1.0.0 Suriname Boa (Kayne)
0.2.0 Cats (Lilly and Reese)

Yeah, just place larger rocks. I was at Michael's the other day ( I don't know if you have that in Orlando) but it's basically a craft store, and they had nice big rocks that you would normally use for flowers and such that are about the length of my thumb and double the width. I was going to get them for my fbts.

Play sand is good, calcium sand is good. You just want to make sure that your sand isn't like small gravel, which some sands are. The reason for that is so the turtle doesn't die of impaction. If the grains are small, then they can be passed easily without any stress on the turtle.