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So as some of you know, I now have a baby snapper, and today I tried feeding it in a container due to the reason that my tank is very large for a small 1 inch Turtle, my tank is 40 gallons, and it is very hard for the snapper to find the food I put in there, and what makes it even more hard, is that everytime I open the lid, it freaks out and hides some where, by the time it gets to the food it already has been sitting around in the water and has lost all of its nutritional value, because the food turns from dark brown to light colored gray. So my mom suggested feeding it in a container, so I applied this technique and we left in there for 30 minutes, when we came back, we found that the very 16 pellets we left in there were still there. And has not been eaten, in the tank when it finds the food it eats a few but spits out due to it probably having no flavor. How can I get the turtle to start eating in the container? Also it seems to have a gastric problem, because every now and then its but will float to the top of the water. When I had my other 2 snappers a while back they both suffered from this problem, and even one of my sliders, unfortunately my first snapper drowned, and the second one I had to get rid of because my Step-Dad said he did not want an ugly looking black turtle in the house.

So my question is how do I get the Turtle to start eating in a container? and should I worry about the gastric problems?

Go back to moving and problems thread. You never responded. PS, just to be nice they will eat anything. But, I don't recommend keeping it!

Moving a turtle around will increase the stress and probably suppress the appetite with new and young turtles. What kind of foods have you offered it?

steve wrote:Moving a turtle around will increase the stress and probably suppress the appetite with new and young turtles. What kind of foods have you offered it?

Hatchling Turtle Formula Pellets, Live Mealworms, Romaine it ate a few pieces of romain. Nothing much at the moment since its to small for crickets and the feeder fish they sell at the petshops are too large, and I can't find Ghost Shrimp anywhere anymore.
It has ate all this stuff, by the time it finds the Hatchling Turtle Formula the stuff has already lost 95 percent of its nutrients I am sure of it, and it goes from dark colored brown to light gray, the mealworms it finds eventually and eats them up, although I can't feed to much of these or else it will grow the snapper to grow a bit too fast.

You can try small minnows. It may take them a few bites, but they can do it. You might have to hold the tail of the minnow to help your turtle catch it.

This coming up sunday, I will most likely be going to another petstore or fishstore, and will see what I can buy. Bloodworms, Small Crickets, and Small Guppies are on the list.

steve wrote:You can try small minnows. It may take them a few bites, but they can do it. You might have to hold the tail of the minnow to help your turtle catch it.

Hi I don't know if I should start a new post, so I gonna post it here. My Snapper is doing great so far, I quit trying to feed him in a seperate container, a while ago. His tank is getting pretty dirty so I will be cleaning it soon. He eats like a champ now. When I first got him he did seem to have gastric problems with his butt floating to the top of the water *thats gone now*, than he would swim a bit lopsided *thats also gone*, he did not like eating pellets and prefered mealworms... now he eats pellets, shrimp and the occasional mealworms, when he gets bigger I will upgrade his diet by several different pellets, with multiple types of bugs, with minnows, guppies and shrimp, and the occasional water plants. When he was swimming lopsided he had no bubbly substance from his nose, nor was it ever wet, he never made squeaking noises, nor gasped for air, so It had to be adjustment to the new water, and the filters, since the filters make a powerful current. He has grown about 1-2 centimeters since I had him. Also he seems to yawn about 2-3 times a day, but according to everyone I talked with that have had snappers, this is very common, even my other snappers I had before yawned quite a bit in a day.