Box turtles, though primarily terrestrial, love to splash around in the water, and of course box turtles need access to fresh drinking water, too.

Tortoises need access to fresh water as well, so it's a natural that some type of pond should be included in an outdoor enclosure, even if only deep enough to provide a ready source of fresh drinking water.

I wanted ponds that were deep enough for the turtles and tortoises to immerse themselves, but not big enough to require major maintenance or financial outlay. They needed to be very basic and easily reproduced. They had to be sloped enough to allow the turtles and tortoises easy and safe access, and they had to be easy to clean. I wanted ponds that could be flushed weekly rather than requiring filters that would have to be powered in some manner.

In looking for the right solution, I tried a number of options used successfully by other people. All of them had and have issues.

My initial design had a small rectangular pond excavated from each pen, framed in wood, and concreted in with a sump and drain plug.

For my first test pen, I used this design. I used a shovel to excavate most of the pond, and the auger to create a deep 3-4 gallon sump at the lowest spot. I used some hard plastic from an underbed box lid, and cut a rough cover for the sump hole.

In the center of the plastic, I inserted a 1-5/8 PVC pipe to provide a drain, and placed the plastic with the pipe over the sump hole. With the sump hole covered carefully first so the plastic didn't cave in under the weight, it took around two 60-lb bags of quik-crete to fill my pond excavation, which when cured held approximately 3 gallons of water.

While this worked well and was relatively inexpensive, it seemed more labor-intensive than I'd like. By framing it, the dirt had to be excavated further than planned and required more concrete to build back the slopes.

However, the 3-toed box turtles loved it, and within 24 hours were happily splashing around. The pond allowed them easy access in and out, and was just deep enough to submerge. The biggest issue was that I failed to give the pond a "lip" that would prevent heavy rains from washing down into the pond, so it needs to be flushed if rainwater fills it with mud.

With the first pond down I wanted to try some other ideas. Stay tuned for part 2!