That was the question I found myself asking after I adopted my 8 year old Red Eared Slider from someone who was moving across the country for graduate school. They posted on a local page asking if anyone was interested in adopting her. I had always loved turtles, and I remembered finding box turtles in the creek that ran near my neighborhood. I also remembered saving them from the road when I would find them crossing through traffic. This continued once I got my own car and would stop whenever I saw one. So when I saw this posting I thought to myself, why not?

So that is where I found myself, with an adult turtle in a too small tank with no good way to bask. It was pretty obvious the previous owner cared for their turtle (she actually cried when she dropped her off at my house), but looking at the situation with fresh eyes after having done some initial research on turtle care I could see that she had definitely outgrown her tank, and she needed a good way to bask. The existing solution of ‘she gets onto the fake rocks’ wasn’t going to last. She was way too big to get fully onto the top at this point, and having to keep the rock dry meant I could only fill the tank a little less than halfway with water. Both of these were issues I wanted to solve, so naturally, I took to Amazon!

I found a TON of basking platforms, all of which were small, fragile, and wouldn’t support the weight of even a medium sized turtle. I did find a few options that could handle a larger turtle, but they were honestly pretty lack-luster in terms of appearance and features.

Thus began this crazy Turtle Treehouse journey!

I realized that since I had this problem that a lot of other turtle parents probably did too. A few months later I opened my first Etsy shop and started offering platforms for sale. Initially I got one or two orders, but then I got more, and a few more, and then they got to the point where I was getting a steady flow of a few orders a month, sometimes a few a week!

Jump to present day, and I offer several different platform designs for sale through Etsy. It’s important to me that everything I sell is something I would use myself, and it was also important to me to have solutions for people that would accommodate different tank setups and different price points. Just because someone doesn’t have a lot to spend on a basking platform, that doesn’t mean their turtle doesn’t need one, so my goal is to lower prices and update designs to be better and more affordable as much as possible as I have new ideas.

I strive to make my platforms high-quality and worth their cost. It makes me happy to hear from buyers about how much their turtle uses the platform, and how much better their quality of life has gotten. I always try to do what’s right by the customer wherever I can, so if there is a problem with a product I will work to find a solution that works for everyone AND leaves the turtle in the best possible environment.