Anyone have a pond?

I've been watnign to make a pond for a while and now that i have my RES i figure i should make it turtle freindly so she can use it during the warm months. but im afraid of her escapeing or getting eaten by something. i imagine if the pond is deep enough she can escape thngs like racoons but im still nervous about her escaping

I don't have a pond,but if I may suggest something;why don't you use a catnet,or whatever you call it over there,and put it all over the pond.That way you can even give her a bit of land also.It would be like she is in a cage with a lid,but the whole cage is made out of net.Gosh,I hope you know what I mean ,and I didn't do it too complicated!
Another thing-I would use a net with small wholes so she can't stick her head through!!

I had a pond in my old house with koi not turtles and we had a raccon problem. We fixed this using (2) methods, the first involves my dad and a rifle so I wont touch that one but the second resolution (more humane and legal) was a large cage made from wire fence shaped like a big kiddie pool that fit over the pond, we wieghed the top down with sandbags since racoons are clever devils and will stop at nothing if they know a meal is close.This didnt really ruin the aesthetics of the yard since Racoons are noctural and we only used the cage at night. Hope this helps, good Luck!

I have a very large pond with both a shallow and deep end. The deepest is about 2.5 feet. I have been told that raccoons won't go in the deeper water. We have raccoons around here but they don't bother with the turtles, I am more concerned about the Herons, they used to steal my fish. This is a pic of half of my pond to give you an idea of size. The RES is 9" long.



I finally figured out how to post pics and now they're soooo big, sorry about that.

hey very nice pond, yea we dont have anything but pigeons and seaguls here

Is that a concrete pond? Not good for turts...or fish for that matter. Concrete leaches toxins into water.

It's concrete. We have kept fish and ducks in it for 20 years and turtles for 3 years. There have been no illnesses and the only deaths have been fish when they were eaten by herons and turtles. The previous owners built the pond to raise trout in it. I haven't heard of concrete leaching toxins.

I have a pond, but it only supports fish...and the odd toad. I don't have any pictures of it either...i'll take some in the spring when all of the flowers are blooming...

This is my big pond..1200 gallons, 5ft deep in the middle. Sides go from 1 ft, to 3ft to finally the 5ft. Sloped sides so Raccoons can't sit and feast themself. This pond holds Koi and Goldfish, Snails, Toads and Tadpoles:


My middle pond at 120 gallons. This is the Turtles pond but it is connected to the BIG pond above with a stream for constant water flow and filtration:


The little pond at 100 gallons. This is the nursery for all the babies which come from the big pond:

Holly

I'll see if I can find pics...

I put a pond, stream, waterfalls, the whole works in out at my folks place. They fenced the entire yard...depending on where you live, if you have a body of water deeper than whatever then it needs to be fenced to prevent stupid neighborhood kids from drowning themselves.

With the yard fenced, we keep one old dog back there, he ignores any reptiles and amphibians and protects his domain from other animals. Coons couldn't get in, anything smaller like squirrels he chases off. Bo is a good doggy.






The water is actually in a series, it's pumped from the bottom pond up to the top of the yard where it spills into a small pond, runs down a winding stream, spills into a small crescent of water that overflows into a large pond, that pills over a waterfall under the footbridge into the big pond where we keep all the koi...then pumped back around again.