Turtles are naturally carnivorous animals and should be fed a variety of live foods like earthworms, crickets, shrimp and earthworms. Additionally, turtles love fresh produce like dandelion greens, cabbage turnip greens carrots squash bell peppers.
Checking the nutrient ratio is of great importance as some fruits and vegetables contain too much phosphorous which cancels out calcium content in their composition.
Contents
Protein
This turtle food features a mix of vegetables, fish and shrimp to provide your reptile with essential vitamins and nutrients. While its protein levels won’t interfere with more omnivorous turtles’ eating habits, there’s enough animal proteins here for carnivorous turtles too! Additionally, its floating qualities ensure it won’t cloud your tank’s water.
This food provides your turtle with an ideal combination of proteins, fats and vitamins while being easy for it to digest. It contains ingredients such as menhaden fish meal and oil, ground corn, poultry byproduct meal, porcine meat meal and dried kelp that provide essential nutrition.
Only give your turtle as much food as it can consume within several minutes to prevent overfeeding and choking, making this food suitable for turtles of all sizes and stages of life. Plus, this food comes complete with vitamin C supplement to add an extra healthy boost!
Vegetables
Vegetables offer additional health benefits for your turtle. Not only can they satisfy hunger pangs more effectively than meat-based foods, they’re much easier for their digestion too!
Some great options to try include romaine lettuce, collard greens, kale, turnip greens, mustard greens, carrot tops, dandelion greens, zucchini squash and aquatic plants like water hyacinth or duckweed.
Do not feed your turtles earthworms or insects found in your yard as these could contain harmful fungus and bacteria that could make them sick. Furthermore, avoid giving too much sugary fruit such as berries and grapes as this could make your turtle sick as well.
Your turtles need not only vegetables but also proteins to provide essential amino acids. Calcium supplements should be given twice each week via pellets or mixed into their food as a powdered form.
Fruits
Turtles can gain essential nutrition from non-toxic plants like carnations, dandelion greens, hibiscus, roses, dandelions or nasturtiums. Furthermore, turtles enjoy snacking on fruits like apples, cantaloupe, bananas strawberries or berries that do not contain seeds such as blueberries.
Turtles should receive a diet consisting of fruits, vegetables and pellets on an ongoing basis; in addition, live animal protein such as crickets, mealworms, waxworms (but no live baby mice!) or insects such as comet goldfish or mosquito fish should also be given as sources of nutrition.
ZooMed Hatchling Diet, available in 50-pound bags, provides turtles with an excellent food choice. Packed full of meats, vegetables and fruits and with an optimal calcium-to-phosphorus ratio. Hikari Tropical Sinking Carnivore Pellets also make an excellent food option; their blend includes soybean, krill, wheat germ and seaweed processing over 10 hours at low temperature before being fortified with additional vitamins.
Supplements
Additionally to providing them with an assortment of food, turtles should receive calcium supplements twice weekly. A powdered calcium supplement mixed into their food or alternatively baking some eggshells until they become brittle before crushing into powder for sprinkled onto food is ideal.
Hikari Tropical Algae Wafers are an excellent supplement designed specifically for herbivorous turtles. This tasty snack adds extra spirulina and chlorella into their diet while providing essential Vitamin A while being low-protein-based – perfect for most herbivorous turtles!
ZooMed’s Natural Aquatic Turtle Growth Formula is an excellent food choice for omnivorous turtles. Packed full of fish meal for added protein and packed full of A and E, this convenient 2.2lb bag makes an excellent option for keeping large populations.
