General Care Discussion

It's true! I fasted my fish and turtles (In seperate tanks of course!) yesterday for the first time. (Yes I know I fail.) Their appetite was ravenous this morning and have learnt to appreciate food. They gobble up every piece of food, even though they disliked it at the start. Even vegetables are willingly accepted!
But this morning before I fed them, the tank was filled with green gunk accumulating in the corner that looked like 'kaya' spread. Weird. Cleaned that stuff out.

Why was this done?

I heard that fasting would be better for them somewhere on this site. Anyway, I felt that they were eating too much, maybe to the extent where their system couldn't catch up. .-.
I have started to make them work for their food, hiding it in random places and wedging it between plants and the like, or even using a small toy thing and have them bat the thing around for the food to fall out. Yeah xD They were getting a little fat.
But the weird thing is Sunny used to be the second smallest of the three when I first bought them, and suddenly she's become the biggest of the two. She eats more than Lily, that's for sure, but enough food is offered to each and I see that each are receiving an equal amount recently, but Lily hasn't grown much bigger from the time I bought her till now. Stunted growth? I rule that out, for I have them in a 20g now, slightly too small , will be upgrading to a 40g soon. But the conditions are not extremely overcrowded, fairly spacious and such. What's wrong, I wonder?

Appetite will vary on an individual basis, especially when feeding plants and vegetables. How are you certain they are getting an equal portion?

My Trevor is 18 years old (soon to be 19 in March) and fasting one day a week is something his first veterinarian advised me to do about 17 years ago. It was also something I read about way back when when I first got him in many of the RES care books I had bought.

So I followed the books and the vets advice and, once a week, every Wednesday for 17 years Trevor does not eat a meal. The benefit to this is that it keeps Trevor's bowel movements regular. Every Thursday morning I wake up to a good poop in the tank, easy to clean up. The rest of the week he eats like normal.

That's interesting, thanks for posting that. My male RES poops very regularly, usually minutes after eating. My female RES is a mystery... could easily be a week without seeing anything.

I usually take one out to play and explore while the other is eating. However they seem to be ok with sharing food while both are in the tank at once. I usually put Lily in another tank and offer her a wide range of foods and even treats and leave her there for a few hours to let her feed herself. She seems uncomfortable eating without Sunny though, although Sunny doesn't seem to mind at all. She does eat a bit from Lily's bunch of food but that's all. They're pretty close to each other..

Matryoshka wrote:I usually take one out to play and explore while the other is eating. However they seem to be ok with sharing food while both are in the tank at once. I usually put Lily in another tank and offer her a wide range of foods and even treats and leave her there for a few hours to let her feed herself. She seems uncomfortable eating without Sunny though, although Sunny doesn't seem to mind at all. She does eat a bit from Lily's bunch of food but that's all. They're pretty close to each other..

My Turtles do the same. When i clean out there tank i put them in a large plastic container. Ill feed them in there, and they wont eat unless they are in there tank...

General Care Discussion :: Fasting your turtle for a day can increase their appetite.

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