jpfieber
Member
In the fall of 2024 my wife ( @Wilbur1111 ) and I began caring for a Russian Tortoise we named Boris. He came in a 10-20 gallon aquarium full of sand and rocks with a tiny light on it; it didn't appear he'd had a good life for quite a while. We decided to create a much better environment for him, based off research we'd done largely here on the forum. We live in Wisconsin, USA, which isn't hospitable to an outdoor tortoise enclosure for almost half the year, so the plan was for an indoor enclosure. Because he's an adult, and we wanted to be able to see him easily and often, we opted for an open, table type enclosure. We wanted to give him at least 32sq, as recommended here, but location wise it would have to fit in our living room. To make this happen, we designed the enclosure to be 'L' shaped to fit in with our living room furniture. We made it modular, three tables that connect together, so it's easier to move if needed. Each table is 3' x 3' for a total of 27sq ft, and to get the final 5sq ft we added a second level 'balcony' to one of the tables with a ramp for access. The second level has a slate base and we've been trying to keep most of the food and water there so it's easier to clean. Boris now regularly goes up and down the ramp on his own. Under the 'balcony', we created an enclosed dark space for him, but so far he hasn't taken much interest in it, he does most of his sleeping burrowed into the substrate. The substrate is 4" deep, with the bottom 3" being damp coconut coir, and the top inch being Orchid Bark. We've included a number of tortoise safe plants. We're using Acadia Jungle Dawn LED bars for 'daylighting' over each table (~12 hours a day). One table then also has the basking zone, which includes a 100 watt Exo Terra Intense Basking Spot for infrared (~12 hours a day), an Acadia T5 HO 12% fixture (~ 4 hours a day) and a ZooMed PowerSun 70 watt HID lamp fixture (~4 hours a day). We've adjusted the light heights to keep the basking zone betweein 90-100 degrees. All the lights are on a smart powerstrip with each plug on a custom timer (we can also manually control them through a phone app or Google Assistant). The 'tray' of each table is made of HDPE sealed with silicone caulk, and the frame is mostly wood with some aluminum trim and an 8" tall glass perimeter so we can see him, but he can't run around the house. We created a frame over the top with dowels and wire mesh so we'd have flexibility in where the lights went, and so we could see through the enclosure since it's in the middle of our living room.
Here's the initial 3D AutoCAD rendering, I designed it in AutoCAD to work out all the dimensions and figure out how things went together before I started ordering and cutting up materials. Then after many trips to and deliveries from Menards/Home Depot/Amazon I created all the pieces in my basement workshop over the span of a month (or two):
Here are some photos of how it turned out, some right after we got it setup, and the last two from today:
We couldn't have done this without a lot of help from many of you on the forum, either directly through our questions, or indirectly through the hundreds of your posts that we read through for inspiration and information. If you have any questions (I do have photos of the construction phase if that's of any interest), don't hesitate to ask, we'd love to give back and share some of what we've learned, and are still learning!
Here's the initial 3D AutoCAD rendering, I designed it in AutoCAD to work out all the dimensions and figure out how things went together before I started ordering and cutting up materials. Then after many trips to and deliveries from Menards/Home Depot/Amazon I created all the pieces in my basement workshop over the span of a month (or two):
Here are some photos of how it turned out, some right after we got it setup, and the last two from today:
We couldn't have done this without a lot of help from many of you on the forum, either directly through our questions, or indirectly through the hundreds of your posts that we read through for inspiration and information. If you have any questions (I do have photos of the construction phase if that's of any interest), don't hesitate to ask, we'd love to give back and share some of what we've learned, and are still learning!
