Turtles require a balanced diet that includes fruits, vegetables and flowers as well as a good source of meat.
Mazuri turtle food is an excellent option for aquatic pets. Packed full of plant and animal proteins as well as essential vitamins and nutrients, this delicious treat makes a nutritious choice.
Other options to feed a turtle include frozen fish flakes and cooked poultry or beef chunks (raw meat poses too much risk of infection), as well as fruits like apples and strawberries as delicious additions to its diet.
Contents
High-Quality Ingredients
At pet supply stores, you can find turtle foods designed specifically to provide your aquatic friend with all of the variety he would find in his natural environment. These meals contain ingredients like fish meal, worms, insects, vegetables and pellets so as to provide your aquatic buddy with plenty of variety from his meal.
High-quality ingredients help ensure that the nutrients found in your pet’s food can be more easily absorbed and utilized, leading to improved energy levels and overall health benefits. Furthermore, certain brands of turtle food offer superior digestibility.
Turtle owners can supplement store-bought pellets with plant matter such as kale, turnips greens, red leaf lettuce and dandelion greens for extra plant matter in their pet turtle’s diet. Small pieces of fruits and vegetables such as bananas, cantaloupe and strawberries may also be added as treats for their aquatic pet turtle. Feeder fish (often called feeder species) is another option; but should only be fed sparingly due to parasites and bacteria carrying parasites that could infect their aquarium as well as large body size that could injure or kill their tank environment – these should only be fed as feeder fish are generally smaller in their tank environment and bones can injure or kill your turtle’s aquarium environment.
Variety is Key
Turtles require a varied diet in order to receive all the necessary nutrients, which includes commercial diets, fresh vegetables and fruit as well as live prey – especially live prey as this provides calcium, protein, vitamins and minerals that their bodies require. Snails are an excellent source of these elements; snails are commonly available from pet stores or found wild; however worms and crickets also make an ideal meal choice as they occur naturally in their environment.
Fruit can make for a tasty treat for your turtle, though should not serve as its primary source of sugar. Apples, bananas, strawberries and melons all make nutritious snacks with added flavor! Before offering to your turtle be sure to thoroughly wash any fresh fruit or vegetable first!
Avoid Canned or Processed Food
Aquatic turtles are omnivorous creatures, feeding on both plant- and animal-derived foods. They consume fish as well as various invertebrates such as snails, crickets, earthworms, waxworms, mealworms and wild-caught amphibians (tadpoles). Furthermore, aquatic turtles snack on green leafy vegetables such as collard greens and romaine lettuce as well as fresh or canned (but never with added sugars) fruit products as well as aquatic plants like water hyacinth.
Processed foods like lunch meat, sausage and canned food with high salt content and preservatives may pose health hazards to turtles. Since these aren’t found naturally in their environment, such processed meals shouldn’t form the bulk of their diet.
Supplements can supplement a turtle’s daily diet by providing essential vitamins and minerals. Along with premium commercial turtle pellets like ZooMed’s Natural Aquatic Turtle line, fresh vegetables, cuttlebone for calcium absorption, floating ice blocks and live water plants can be added as enrichment items to their daily regimen.
Supplements
Turtles require several essential vitamins in order to remain healthy, with deficiency of any one causing serious issues, including poor growth and an enlarged shell appearance. Vitamin A should especially be ensured their diet contains enough of it.
Mazuri Crocodilian Diet, for instance, contains all these necessary vitamins and minerals in an ideal ratio for reptiles – with high calcium and phosphorous levels and plenty of Vitamin D3.
Hikari Reptile Turtle Sticks are another good option that is suitable for all species of reptiles and turtles, packed full of ingredients such as krill, soybeans, wheatgerm and seaweed as well as plenty of essential vitamins.
ZooMed also offers a vegetarian-friendly food called Natural Aquatic Turtle- Growth Formula that uses similar ingredients, but contains less corn meal and instead uses soybean meal. This 50lb bag makes an ideal solution for those caring for multiple hatchlings at once.
