Basking Platform Ramp Failure

So, if you don’t know, water will evaporate out of the tank. The rate of evaporation varies but my 29 gallon tank, about half full, loses about 2 gallons per week.

Not an insignificant amount, especially when it comes to the basking platform ramp. I don’t have the basking platform where it rises and falls with the water level right now, it is fixed to the tank walls. Thursday is the day she gets more water and a beneficial bacteria treatment, but I noticed that I didn’t see her on the platform on Tuesday and Wednesday. I thought it was because the platform was too high out of the water and she couldn’t get on it.

What to do? I didn’t want to mess with it too much right now, so I was thinking that instead of adding 2 gallons on Thursday, I would add a gallon earlier in the week. That did work well, but I also wanted to give her some extra grip on the ramp.

After lots of internet research, I hit on a post that said you could superglue, link, the grippy shelf liner, link, to the ramp. I thought that sounded like a very feasible option, I already had the shelf liner and just ordered the superglue above from Amazon.

I pulled her ramp out and proceeded to glue the strips on to the ramp and let them cure, then put it back in. Cosetta investigates it after a while and everything was going well … until it didn’t! She starts trying to bite it! This is relatively normal for turtles, they always try to bite new things. I thought she would figure it out and quit. She. Did. Not.

She finally managed to rip a strip off and then I panicked because I was afraid she would eat it. Needless to say, I took the ramp up and got all of the grippy liner off. Experiment failed, I’ll just have to keep the water level more stable.