Sinking Ship

Bowser has grown since July.  A LOT.
She was barely 4 inches long (shell length) when we got her, and her claws didn't even make a mark when she scratched you.  Now she's over 6 inches long and her claws can do some damage.  She doesn't scratch to be aggresive like other animals, but when you hold her she gets scared and starts flailing her legs around to get a grip.  So needless to say, we pick her up with a towel now.  Anyway, where I'm going with this is that she's also much heavier now and her basking dock is having trouble standing up to her weight.
Check out how much the dock sunk when she was basking today:

"Umm...guys, my dock is sinking....buy me another ok?"

The problem is that the dock we have is the biggest one you can buy that she won't eat.

Yes, we had a big problem a while back about her eating her old dock, which was made of a foam/resin material that she could easily take chunks out of.  She ate so much of that dock that it caused turtle tummy troubles and very poor water quality.
Our only other option is to build a homemade dock or perhaps an above tank basking area.
Not that it's expensive, but we're not too crafty when it comes to things like that.

So here's a photo of the old dock, when she had just started to eat it

By the time we got the current dock she had eaten much more.

This brings me to the topic that we have to be very careful about what we put into the tank.

Nothing that she can get stuck in, bite pieces off of, try to eat, break, or even think about destroying.

We have gone through so many props and other aquarium items and have had a few scares that lead us to believe that we will one day have to keep the tank completely bare.

Right now she has her Mayan pyramid, decorative chair, small treasure chest and three golf balls to play with.  And what does she go for?  The digital thermometer that's stuck to the glass.  Yep, that's Bowser for ya!

More photos and videos to come...