Pet Turtles: Filtration System

"The next thing we're going to talk about, and it's very important, because we are dealing with a lot of water here, is filtration. It's very important you get the proper filtration on a turtle tank; otherwise you will end up with an extremely dirty tank. Greater risk of things like Salmonella and stuff like that so you want to stay away from that. What we're looking at here is my preferred method for filtering a turtle tank. This is a fluvial canister filter. This sits outside of the aquarium and there's two tubes that run out of the top of it and run into the aquarium. They're pretty easy to use, essentially. Once we open it up in here and look inside. It just open up with the clamp, the top, the whole top comes off. Set that aside for now. Inside here we have our filter media. It comes in these little packets, these little foam blocks. You buy these; they come in packs of two. They last a long time; you can actually wash them out and reuse them. Then also you have three, if I remember correctly maybe it's four, three little containers in here that carry various types of filter medium. What we're going to put in here are these little white things, these are bio beads. What they do is they allow beneficial bacteria to build up on them and that bacteria will help eat waste in your aquarium and take care of your turtle tank. We'll talk about the rest of filtration in just a moment."