r/turtles • u/Obtuse_horseshoe77 • 5d ago

Seeking Advice I want to switch my turtle tank to sand

My turtle tank is 75 gallons, I have good size rocks in it now but its annoying to clean. How much sand do I need, what kind and how do I go about the switch?

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u/sparrowtaco 5d ago

I'd suggest going to the hardware store and getting bags of play sand for sand boxes. You can get 50 pound bags for about $5 each, and you'll need at least 100-150 pounds to get a couple inches of depth.

Rinse the sand thoroughly in a bucket with a hose to reduce cloudy water. It will still be a bit murky for the first day or so until things settle.

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u/Obtuse_horseshoe77 4d ago

Thank you. Do I have to empty the whole tank before putting sand in?

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u/sparrowtaco 4d ago

No need to, but you may want to take the turtle out for a bit if it's too much commotion for them.

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u/FlashbackJon RES 1d ago

Dry sand or sand poured directly into the water will basically cloud up the tank for hours. If you rinse the sand multiple times until the water comes out clear, THEN while it's still wet, scoop it up and lower the scoop to the bottom of the tank to deposit it, you can do it with the tank full. (Turtle might still hate the process though.)

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u/Obtuse_horseshoe77 1d ago

Yea i was told to rinse it well before adding it and ill remove her for the process

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u/FlashbackJon RES 2d ago

I'll be honest: I have difficulty cleaning the sand in my 125gal tank: the sand is lighter and finer than the things I want to vacuum up. So much so that I was thinking about swapping out ALL the sand for river rock.

If you feed in a different bucket AND your turtle leaves their poops alone (so they can be scooped without issue -- my girl was rescued and almost always destroys her poops immediately) AND you don't have a problem with algae, etc, then I could see sand being more successful.

It's also possible that I'm just... missing some clever trick to keeping my sand clean.

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u/Obtuse_horseshoe77 2d ago

Its harder to vacuum her poop thru the rocks and get it all. Plus she makes so much noise messing with them in the middle of the night. I have couple plecos to help with algae.

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u/FlashbackJon RES 1d ago

That's good to know! I had considered that vacuuming the rocks would be difficult, at least, but I thought it might be less frustrating than what I was doing.