Hi Sue!

You'd want it deep enough for the turtle(s) to be able to winter over. They
will settle on the bottom in the winter and will move around only when water
temps increase.So just like with fish a hole open in the ice is important.
Unless you live in Florida or some place nice and warm in the winter (sigh...
;-)

Straight sides are supposed to stop raccoons. Raccoons will swim but I imagine
a turtle would wise up and dive for the bottom and avoid any swimming raccoons.

I built an island in my pond. We used stacked builders brick (which makes for
great fish condos - even saw Yertle the Turtle hanging out in there). On the
top we found this great planter, DH says it looks like an oil filter, it is
round and 15" across and about 5 inches high. We put it on top and keep the
water at or above its top. It is planted with iris, lizards tail and creeping
jenny. I toss land snails on the island. One day I watched one of the turtles
push over an iris frond to get a snail that had snail-ed up the frond.crunch,
crunch!


k30a