I'm so glad to hear you're home again after your stay in the hospital. Two months is a long, long time. Hope you're feeling good these days!
Sylar is a cute little guy isn't he.
Those very wide seams between the scutes are signs of very rapid growth. You are right - his diet needs some adjustment. Have you read up on the nuitrition section on this site? Here's the link:
http://www.redearslider.com/index_nutrition.html
I think in addition to adjusting the quantity you should also take a look at what he's eating. For a healthy turtle, you should feed as many good quality pellets as would fit inside his head (not including his neck) if his head were hollow. If someone in your family (no names mentioned) tends to overfeed, you can help control this with one of the pill boxes that people use with the seven little boxes - one for each day of the week. Fill up the boxes once a week and then the rule is, no more pellets per day than what's in the box. I'm not sure how big the reptomin baby pellets are, but you can judge for yourself how many of them would fit in Skyler's hollow head.
Once Skykler's around 4" long, you can cut back to a headfull of pellets every other day.
The site I provided above names some brands of quality pellets. Reptomin baby is one of the very good ones.
You can stop with the mealworms. The contain a substance that interfers with calcium absorption, and turtles need a lot of calcium for healthy shell and bones.
Does he get cuttlebone? You can put pieces of cuttlebone in the tank (get cuttlebones in the bird section of the pet store, they're very inexpensive) for Skyler to nibble on when he's craving calcium.
An occasional rosy red minnow is fine. The chase gives him some exercise too.
Skyler needs some plant matter in his diet. Young turtles aren't as enthusiastic about veggies as grown turtles, but they will eat some. He can have green leafy veggies like leaf lettuce daily and a couple of times a week he can have carrot peels, tomato, blueberries, steamed sweet potato, bell pepper, fresh basil, etc. Water plants like anacharis are also good for turtles to eat.
Skyler needs to go ahead and shed those old baby scutes. The best thing for shedding is lots of good basking under good UVB light. In addition, foods containing vitamin E are helpful. Here's a list of vitamin e containing foods:
Tomato
Sweet potato
Turnip greens
Blueberries
Apple skin
If what you're seeing around his neck is whitish, translucent whisps then it's normal turtle skin shedding. If the skin shedding seems heavy it's probably because he's been getting too rich a diet. The other thing that can cause abnormally heavy shedding is temps that are too warm. Water temp for a little one like Skyler should be around 78 degrees.
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