Feeding and Nutrition :: how many pellets

[nickyds23]

for a four-inch turtle?
how bout a 3 inch turt?

[Lantic]

as many as it could fit if its head was hollow. make sense?

[Caphits]

also, only feed the 4" turt every other day.

[nickyds23]

i understand the head size rule.
I was trying to get feedback from other people on their experiences.
It's hard for me to estimate how many should fit in this head.

[BuddyTurt]

i found a great way to make the estimation for my Buddy. I found in my daughter's play kitchen stuff a spoon that is pretty darn near the size of her head. So when I feed her pellets she gets one scoop from that spoon. Makes it a lot easier than trying to figure out if the pile in my hand is the right size or not!

[geekyturtle]

Mine is a tiny bit over 3" now, and I give him 4 or 5 reptomin baby pellets a day, and they're about half the size of the normal pellets. He'll get normal ones when these run out.

I also toss in some lettuce in the morning if I have time.

[Kemul]

Hmm... Ramen is about 1.75" now and I started giving it 10 baby Reptomin pellets
daily 2 days ago. I guesstimate that 10 can fit in Ramen's head (3D view) now.
Previously, Ramen got 8 of those pellets daily. All eaten quite fast and cleanly.
No veggies yet though. I tried tomato slices for vitamin E, but no dice.

Not sure if the pellet size is the same, what I have is about 5mm (0.2") long and
2mm thick.

[TheComputerGremlin]

When my turtle was 1.5", I fed 2-3 full-sized Reptomin pellets daily, broken into half or thirds. By 3", I was feeding about 5 daily. By 4", I was giving 6-7 daily (I didn't realize we had hit the 4" mark, so I was still feeding daily). Now that she's 5.5" or so, I'm feeding about 7 every other day. I alternate with HBH Turtle Bites, which I also give about 7. So far, she's doing well.

It's not super important that you feed an exact number of pellets each day, I mean I can feed 7 give or take one or two. What's important is that you feed around 7 pellets rather than, oh, say, 30 pellets. It's not going to hurt your turtle to get an extra pellet now and again. I'd say for 4" and under, you want around 6-7 pellets each feeding. (Full-sized Reptomin, for baby Reptomin, you'd double that number.)

[moldygrape]

yea i say about 6-9 reptomin would be good feed him red leaf lettuce too a shell size every day (or any other GOOD lettuce)

[ACF&RESLOVER]

My turtles are 5 3/4 inches and about 5 inches. When I try to estimate the number of regular reptomin pellets that will fit into their heads, I think it's closer to 20-25!

I'm not sure why I am estimating such a different number, but perhaps someone with a lot of experience should put together a better set of rules than "the number that will fit inside their head" because that rule seems to be open to a wide range of estimations.

To me 7 pellets is way less the volume of their heads. Hmmmmmn

I believe I may have been overfeeding protein when they were babies because both have slight pyramiding and rough shells, but if I was overfeeding protein I don't think I was using the "head" rule wrong. I think the rule must be wrong.

[theartbook35]

My turtles are two inches long, and I feed them three pellets each.

Turtles have pretty big appetites, but the size of a four inch turtle's stomach is from my understanding the size of a human thumb nail. That could hold about four or five pellets.

For smaller foods, like dried baby shrimp and krill, they could handle about six pieces.

Not every pellet is the exact same size, so watch that closely. The gammarus pellets I give them are very big so I only break three in half and put that in the tank for feeding.