Feeding and Nutrition :: Picky eater

[beforemyway]

So I've had my turtle now for 17 years (oh my gosh I'm old!), and I only discovered a couple of years ago that my food choice for him was all wrong (see date I joined this site), and that I needed to feed him lettuce. I have attempted this, and he just refuses to eat it. Is there a way to teach an old turtle to eat new foods?

[steve]

You can try the jello shot recipe and I'd recommend that you try a veggie clip with the lettuce.

[marisa]

What exactly have you been feeding him?

What kind of lettuce have you been trying to feed him (avoid iceberg). Many turtles like red-leaf lettuce, especially the reddish areas.

If he''s healthy, you could try just putting a leaf or two of lettuce in tank and wait him out to see if he start nibbling on it. You could also "marinate" the leaf(s) in something with a fishy smell (like the water from tuna or sardines) to get the smell of something he likes on the leaf.

[beforemyway]

His died from the day I bought him till now:

1994 - 2007 Meow Mix dry cat food - sea food flavored
Some date in there - Goldfish
2007 - 2010 Floating Food sticks, Typically the RetroMin brand
2010 - ReptiSticks (ZooMed) which turned the water green
2011 - Natural Aquatic Turtle Food (by ZooMed)

With a slice of apple and pieces of Romane lettuce tossed in over the past 3 years -which he never touched.

Tonight i tried a baby Carrot, chopped into thin slices. He bit it, but immediately dropped it.

[marisa]

Try making the carrot into thin peels and leave them soaking in tuna water overnight as suggested above before offering them to him.

When you wrote, for example, that this year (2011) that Zoo Med's Natural Aquatic Turtle is what he's being given, do you mean that this is basically the only food he's given (and was this the same for the previous years)? If so, it's really good to put more variety into his diet. When a turtle is given only one food, the turtle often becomes "fixated" on that food and will only want to heat that food to the exclusion of other foods. Feeding a variety of foods helps keep this from happening. Your turtle is older and, while he has eaten different brands of pellets over the years, he's simply never gotten used to eating plant matter, which is especially good for older RES. He can learn to do this, but it will take time, patience and some experimentation. You could try other kinds of lettuce, especially red-leaf (but not iceberg), dandelion greens, collard greens, turnip greens, aquatic plants (like anacharis), for example, and see if he has more interest in any of them.

[nickvicious]

I'll have to try the red leaf lettuce. My turtles not a fan of regular romaine but he'll eat carrots and spinach (which apparently I'm not supposed to feed him).

[richieboy]

I tricked mine by hovering a leaf right under a pellet, it worked. I'm sure you'll get it after a while

[Stefina]

Earlier, I feed the shrimp are taken in the fields on my RES ...
What medicine? I ask because I saw a post that shows banned feeding of crustaceans ...

Help ***
Sorry if the post in the wrong place ***

[suprafire]

I got cuttlebone from a small squid at a supermarket for my RES but he prefers to bite chunks off the Hagen Turtle Conditioner instead... the cuttlebone eventually turned yellow and i removed it. Anyone here with a similar experience?

[steve]

Are you getting the type of cuttlebone packaged for birds? That's the type we use. As for those little white turtles, take out what's left and don't use them anymore. They're not proven to work and some believe they might be harmful.

[Love of Animals]

You could try some tough love. Cut back on his pellets a bit. This way you don't starve him but leave him just a little hungry. Put some red leaf lettuce in their tank either by veggie clip or just let it float around. Change the lettuce once a day and do this for a couple of days. He might get hungry enough to give it a try. (I said red leaf lettuce because that's my turtles favorite. You can try other veggies though.) Is that your turtle in your picture? If so he's ready for turtle weight watchers.

[beforemyway]

He's eating it!!!! Now to try to figure out how many pellets to give him :p

[richieboy]

LOL he's chubby. I think you can try half the serving of pellets every other day or Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday. That's what I do. Keep up with the veggies, I don't think you need to cut down on them for losing weight.