General Care Discussion :: Any one-for-all turtle food?

[Boston_Zhao]

My turtle doesn't like veggies, she only eats staple food pellets. SHe donest even eat feeder fish, but she is healthy, energetic, alert, curious, and active... So I am looking for a type of food that can substitute veggies and fruits, ofcouse with enough proteins and minerals... can someone recommend a staple turtle food that has all the needed ingredients?
thanx

[imderanged]

I don't know of any food on the market that can completely replace a varied diet of good quality pellets and vegetables. It's hard to have a balanced diet without variety. Some posters who have had trouble getting their turtles to eat veggies have had luck soaking the lettuce or what have you in tuna water. Others have had great luck with a recipe for turtle jello shots that a member here came up with...you can find the thread here:

http://www.redearslider.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=17486

There is also a food on the market that I use, not instead of pellets but as a supplement to her diet...it's not really a replacement for fresh veggies, but it is a source of plant matter and maybe it will get your turtle more interested in veggies. It has some other stuff in there that really gets their attention, Pickle goes crazy taring the ice cubes apart.
http://www.drsfostersmith.com/product/p ... atid=19661

[BullDog]

As Imderanged said, no pellet out there is nutritionally complete.

How old is your turtle? If she's otherwise healthy and over a year old, you could try the "tough-love" approach. Feed her only veggies for a period of time, and eventually she'll get hungry enough to try them.

If even that doesn't work, I've had success with the jello shots imderanged posted, getting my female to eat the veggies that she doesn't like.

[mzkitty23]

Zoologist's turtle jello shots WILL do the trick. My turt is the pickiest ALIVE, promise you and if I make them with tuna and the juice, he eats them like crazy, getting all the nutrients he needs.

[SpotsMama]

My turtle would eat fresh basil long before he'd eat any other veggie. Have you tried it? Makes the tank smell good too.

Don't despair. With time your turtle will grow up to enjoy his veggies. At seven years old, my Spot now gets more excited about his lettuce leaf than he does about his pellets. What a switch.

[Boston_Zhao]

I have to confess that I am just a little too busy to prepare the tuna water soaked veggie or home made jello..... I find keeping a turtle as pet is hell of work, especially keeping the tank clean.... changing the water, cleaning the tank, and washing the filter are not an easy job, usually 2-3 hours a week. So I am looking for ready-to-feed veggie jello, canned turtle veggies or things like that, I am fine with online shopping so if you have the links for good balanced turtle food, I'd love to see...
BTW My turtle is a 2 yrs 18 mo female one(at least I believe so), almost 8 inches shell length.... So active that I doubt veggies can supply her enough energy!! She is physically so strong, always wanting to walk around my house to explore, even in the 90 gallon tank she constantly swims and plays...
she eats pellets more than the size of her head every 1-2 days, because she is soooo hungry.....

[SpotsMama]

I'm surprised that you're having to spend so much time cleaning the tank. What kind of filter do you have? It's typical for a person with a tank the size of yours to spend maybe a couple of hours a month in cleaning rather than 2 or 3 hours a week. I think my schedule is fairly typical. I do very minor things daily (net out the big stuff and vacuum up the crumbs) and about once a month clean the filter (takes around 30 minutes) and do a partial water change (takes a couple of hours for draining and refilling but I can do other things during the process.)

[mzkitty23]

If u do decide to go with the jello shots, it really isn't that much time. the recipe makes A TON and u just put 3-4 pieces in a ziplock bags and freeze them. so it's really less shopping so for me it's less time. I just take one bag out of the freezer the night before and feed it that next morning. I feed him every third day. I probably make the batches every month and a half.

do u ever give her treats like boiled chicken (only once a month) or some dried krill now and then? maybe that would help satisfy her appetite a bit.

[joeybsmooth]

I would just try to give her different viggies until she find one that she likes. Sweet potatoes work with a lot of turtles . I am still trying to get my turtle to eat his. Some times he will eat on red lettuce.

[MissMandy]

I also feed mine the Healthy herp frozen aquatic turtle diet. I got this at Petsmart in the freezer. It has a lot of veggie, plant content as well as vitamins. I feed this in a seperate container because it can get kind of messy. I hope this is good for them, I haven't been able to get mine to eat veggies either. Good luck!!

[BullDog]

I agree with SpotsMama, that seems like a lot of cleaning. I'm in a very similar situation: I've got an 8.5" female in a 90 gallon tank. I've got a Fluval FX5 for filtration. I give the filter media a clean out about every 4-6 weeks, and a 25-50% about every 2 weeks (which only takes a few minutes with the FX5). In total, I might spend 2 hours total in 4-6 weeks, but it usually takes 1 hour or less to clean the filter + water change at the same time.

[SpotsMama]

It takes me a long time for me to change water because I'm a big chicken about water spilling when I'm fillling the tank with the python attached to the kitchen sink faucet, so I keep the water pressure really really low, so it just bare trickles in. Is this a good idea? probably not.

[pickerbp22]

the jello is the best! its a miracle worker for turtles who dont like veggies!

[Boston_Zhao]

I have a canister filter that is powerful enough to keep the water crystal clear, but food and god-knows-what debris and residual on the bottom of the tank and the disgusting slime on the glass are the real pain.

[Boston_Zhao]

As Imderanged said, no pellet out there is nutritionally complete.

How old is your turtle? If she's otherwise healthy and over a year old, you could try the "tough-love" approach. Feed her only veggies for a period of time, and eventually she'll get hungry enough to try them.

If even that doesn't work, I've had success with the jello shots imderanged posted, getting my female to eat the veggies that she doesn't like.

Well she is 2 years 8 months old, and a lot tougher than me. She once disappeared for 11 days with no food no water and showed up in my kitchen only waiting for her favorite pellets. I have about 16 feeder fish in the tank, now they have become her friends. SHe just refuses to eat them no matter how hungry she is. One of the fish is now almost half a foot long and eats the turtle pellets like crazy, I dont know what to do about it.