Red-ear slider feeding

[The-Raven]

I dont' quite know if this belongs here, but there is no aquatic reptile forum (which there should be ).

I recently got a Red-earred slider, 4 inches wide in a 33 gallon long (which costed me over $250, so anyone who says I should have gotten bigger is welcome to donate money to me via paypal....). His name is Fenix - after my favorite character from the ever-popular game of Starcraft...

Anyway... when I put him in the tank I added 6 rosy red feeders. I figured he'd eat one at a time, if any at all... Well one day I decided to not feed him his pellets and see what he does... the next morning I woke up and ALL six of the rosies were GONE without a trace.

As a result of this, I've decided to regularize his feeding schedule to:
Sunday - slice of cucumber
Monday - pellets
Tuesday - pellets
Wednesday - 3 rosies (whether he eats them or not, I will add them.
Thurday - pellets
Friday - slice of cucumber
Saturday - fasting.

Why will my turtle fast on saturday? Because my fish also fast on saturday - and so do I. I figure animals that are actually made to withstand days if not weeks without eating can hold off a day... especially when an animal like myself who is made to eat 3 times a day can do it.


Anyway, is my feeding regimen good or bad?

 

[SirMinion]

Sounds good apart from the amount of feeders.
Fish are very fatty and turtles are prone to obesity so the rosies should be an occasional treat and not part of his regular diet.

My red-ears thrived on a diet of vallis, lettuce (never iceburg) chopped liver and canned catfood (not dog food, it's too fatty) for 20 years before I had to give them up when I moved house.

The catfood makes a terrible mess in the tank though, so I used to feed them in a seperate 'feeding tank' which was then emptied and cleaned after feeding.

When I had my red-ears, there were no prepared pellet foods available so the catfood provided all the added vitamins & minerals they needed instead.

Pellet foods are a lot less messy!

And yes, fasting is vital with all reptiles. I used to feed every third day, but always have vallis available.

 

[The-Raven]

hahaha, i'm surprised this thread was enough to make them add 'aquatic reptiles' to the name!

 

[SirMinion]

hahaha, i'm surprised this thread was enough to make them add 'aquatic reptiles' to the name! 

Actually this thread appeared just us Mods were discussing the addition of aquatic reptiles!

It was almost as if you could see what we were saying in the mods' forum!

(you can't can you?)

Here's what I wrote:

I think if people want advice about their frogs, toads, turtles etc, then they're likely to post in a forum called invertebrates, amphibians & aquatic reptiles but if they just want to show them off (and get noms for POTM) then they'll put them in Household Pets

edit/ And as if by magic, this thread has appeared in the Inverts & amphibians forum:
http/www.fishforums.net/index.php?showto...=0&#entry751900
Are we sure that members can't read the mods' forums? 

 

[The-Raven]

Alright, well in response to your comment concerning my feeding habits...

I don't want to deprive my turtle of something that he obviously enjoys... should i cut it down to 1 rosy?



And when I was a kid we used to throw grapes in with the turtle... still a good idea or no?

 

[SirMinion]

Cutting down is fine, you don't need to cut them out entirely

Grapes? Dunno, never tried. Did they eat them?
If they do, just make sure that they're seedless grapes as turtle guts cannot handle the tough cellulose in seed coatings and they may cause a blockage.

 

[Sean_Buckley]

Just don't feed them too many feeder fish, they don't have a lot of thiamin, and feeding them almost exclusively on feeders will result in a thiamin deficiency. SirMinion, what size was your turtle tank? Mine is a homemade 45 gallon (36"x16"x18") but I sort of feel guilty about it, because the turtles are quite large (both about 7"), and are you sure they ate the Vallis? Mine just seem to be content biting off chunks and leaving them to clog up the filter.
Sean

 

[SirMinion]

The red- ears were in an indoor pond about six feet square by about two feet deep. three quarters of this was swimming space with the rest of it set to basking space.

The softshell was in a similar set-up about two-thirds the size, with a sand bottom to allow her to burrow.

And yes, I'm certain they ate the vallis, because I used to find it in their poo!

 

[Sean_Buckley]

Damn, it seems like everyone keeps them in an indoor pond but me. I'd like to, but my parents think I have too many tanks already....And ya, that would probably make me think they were eating it too!
Sean