I contacted Cesar for a "custom" set up including base stand, basking condo, and filtration system…read morefor a 5-year-old red eared slider turtle. I could have saved a lot of money (and time after the results) if I had purchased everything myself with tips from turtle forum sites and YouTube DIY videos, but I was willing to pay for a "professional" to have peace of mind and support a local small business.
While Cesar was nice and knowledgeable about general tanks and filtration systems, the outcome of what we received shows that he is not an expert on what turtles fully need- he's more a filtration and fish expert as shown mostly on his website and Yelp photos. The setup we received was not adequate and required extra money (over 2k) to fix cosmetically and functionally for us to have good access from the basking condo to the tank.
Let's start with the pricing issue. I had called Cesar to get some ballpark figures which he had provided with a guess. But when the final quote came ... it was around 1k higher than the ballpark pricing (a big difference!). Knowing the new higher prices, I still contracted him to help me since I wanted an expertly set up and permanent home for our 5-year-old red eared slider. Cesar presented himself as a knowledgeable trustworthy professional.
The base stand was the first to arrive (about a month after deposit was paid). Please note that we never told Cesar to do a rush job as we were more focused on moving into a new home at that time. The base stand was about 40% of the total cost. He provided photos of the stand prior to delivery, and I approved it by looks only.
When the stand arrived, it did look like the picture, but it seemed very basically put together despite Cesar's claim that the manufacturer said it was polycoated to help with waterproofing. I knew it wasn't stained since I didn't want to change the color. At that time, we had a contractor on site at our new home for remodeling who looked at the stand and confirmed that this was an incomplete unfinished product, with the front portion being anything of quality and purely cosmetic.
Upon arrival, the stand had doors that did not open properly. The magnetic closures for the doors were cheap and crooked. The top and back was just plywood. The back and inside had many splinters and open drill holes. The overall wood was not smooth to touch and did not seem it was coated enough to be considered waterproof. Please see provided photos and note that the photo Cesar posted himself on Yelp on Sep 24, 2021, is NOT an accurate depiction of the quality he provided us. The blue stand pictured in his photos was AFTER our contractor spent 3 whole days having to sand down the door and paint it blue. Had I known the door would have been that big of an issue, I should have let the manufacturer fix it prior. But overall quality of the stand would probably have remained the same. The door would have been just rotated to match the grain, which would have caused less work for our contractor, so that part was my fault.
During our initial complaint (before we put our own contractor to work), Cesar said his manufacturer was willing to fix it but at that point we didn't trust them to do so since there were many issues we had complaints about. To add fuel to our fire, Cesar initially claimed that he did not use his regular guy for the job (why did we get a 2nd tiered manufacturer when we paid the same rates as others) and later said this guy also does stands for him all the time. Then why did ours come so incomplete compared to what he shows online? After our initial complaint, Cesar did help us discount us a few hundred dollars but ultimately it wasn't enough to justify the amount of money spent after our contractor worked for days to make it right. However, we tried to be a good sport and continued to entrust Cesar to complete the rest of the contracted turtle filtration system and basking condo set up.
When the condo arrived and filtration was set up, we were so excited to be able to transfer our red eared slider into his new larger home. The condo itself is good quality in materials but was not a custom structure. At first, we did not notice any issue with the condo but contacted Cesar after a few days. The ramp length was a bit short, and our heavier, older red eared slider turtle had a lot of trouble pulling his weight up to get on top to bask. This will only get worse as time passes and he grows larger, and turtles should bask comfortable daily for their shell health. The other issue was that we could not get our arms into the tank to move anything around which presents a HUGE ISSUE FOR SAFETY. It is also not easily able to be lifted off during emergencies. If you research custom turtle basking condos in forums, you will find that the ones that sit on top of the tank are mostly 50% in length so that you can still place your arm inside the tank to clean/move things around or perhaps save your turtle if stuck. Or the ones that have a full 100%
