redearslider.com

hey everyone. i have 2 sliders, but i got a new baby map turtle that won't eat the pellet food. he loves the baby shrimp and krill, but won't eat pellets. what do you recommend i try to feed him? are there any other supplements?

Shrimp and krill are like candy to the turtles thats probably why they're eating them. I would withhold the shrimp/krill and keep offering them the pellets if it gets hungry enough it'll eat them. Also are you offering any greens?

what greens are good for them? and if i stop with the krill and shrimp, and he still won't eat the pellets, how long can he safley go without eating? my res love the pellets...this one just doesn't seem to have a taste for them

http://www.redearslider.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=5

Read that thread, it'll tell you what else your turtles can eat.

Strong odor foods work best for hatchlings. Boiled chicken and fish works very well. Soaking pellets in tuna juice works well also.
Young turtles are attracted to moving things such as worms and gutloaded crickets.
Once they start eating these things and start taking in other foods, wean them off the chicken and fish.
If you want them to try veggies, aquatic plants such as anacharis, water lettuce, water fern, and water hyacinth works great. But let them continuing eating these aquatic plants.

There is a section on the main website on how to entice a turtle to eat..

http://www.redearslider.com/index_nutri ... ice_eating

This came up in another thread where it wasn't quite on-topic, so I thought I'd paste the relevant info here where people could find it. We had a spoiled brat RES for 2 years until we finally got fed up with his nonsense and broke his krill/tuna addiction in 1 week with this method:

We had almost the same problem, a RES who would only eat tuna and krill for 2 years. We finally broke his will by crushing pellets and mixing them with tuna and feeding the mixture on a plastic spoon so it didn't come apart in the water. Start with a tiny amount of pellet and gradually raise the ratio until it's mostly pellet and a little tuna. After only a week of that, ours was eating solid pellets and now he loves them. He wasn't fooled for a second by soaking. Just getting him to ingest some pellet and begin to recognize the taste and smell as something edible is more than half the battle. Eventually he should start to get the two confused. This worked in about a week for us, but you may have to be more patient.