Urgent Care :: Eating Problems =(

[x1111]

hey, i have a RES and i have been feeding it pellets everyday. i decided to give it a little treat and i went and fed it shrimp and krill for a couple of days. Now, all it wants to eat is shrimp or krill...it wont eat the pellets anymore.. help me please!!

[flutterby]

Offer them the pellets, if they get hungry enough they'll eat them again.

[STRAYKINGFISHER]

Soad the pellets in tuna juice, the one packed in water, it has the same smell as the krill and shrimp, let it soak for about 5 min. before you give them to your turtle, it has worked for my turtles for a long time, I am sure it will work for you. Good luck, keep us posted.

[marisa]

This is one reason why it's good to give a varied diet and not feed a turtle too much of one thing. They become fixated on it and will want to eat that food to the exclusion of others (and all that protein in the krill and shrimp isn't good).

[x1111]

Offer them the pellets, if they get hungry enough they'll eat them again.

i have tried starving him..and he still wont eat it....

[x1111]

also..is there another way to make him eat it instead othe the tuna juice ?

[marisa]

Start by soaking the pellets in tuna juice, then slowly decrease using the juice so that eventually they eat just the pellets. Don't expect this to work overnight--you have to wean them away from the tuna. And keep offering other foods as well.

[x1111]

do i need new fresh tuna juice everyday?? or can i use the same that i used before?

[marisa]

I'd drain the juice into another container with a lid and keep that in the fridge. Then I'd use a little bit each day from that to put the pellets in (you shouldn't need much).

[STRAYKINGFISHER]

I freeze the leftover tuna juice until the next time I need it, which is about a month or so later, depending on how much I soaked at that time, I have a big container of ZooMed's turtle food plus the smaller one from before, I soak enough to fill the smaller one about half way, that way if for some reason the food spoils, I won't lose so much of their food.

I also put some of the calcium supplement in with the tuna juice so that when the turtle food soaks in the tuna juice, it will also soak in some of the calcium supplement.