Feeding and Nutrition :: Propper diet?

[Sarah89]

My boyfriend and I are new owners of a baby RES. He is about the size of a half dollar. Right now he is eating regularly, but am I feeding him too much? Not enough? Everything I read or hear seems contradicting. We are feeding him ReptoMin, the variety pack. We give him a single MiniStick in the morning, and one at night. We give him a shrimp in place of MiniStick every few days. Imbetween feedings he nibbles on the Anacharis plant we have in his tank. The clerk at Pet Co said one MiniStick a day is good enough, but I have found a lot of info he gave us was horribly wrong.

[SpotsMama]

Here's a link with lots of good info about what to feed a turtle. Notice there's one section on pellets.

http://www.redearslider.com/index_nutrition.html

This gives a real clear guide on how much to feed in the way of pellets - for a turtle under 4" in length, such as yours, here's the rule. Imagine your turtle's head is hollow like a thimble (not the neck, just the head). Imagine how many pellets it would take to fill the hollow head. That's how many pellets you should feed your turtle every day.

I hope that helps. If it's still not clear, check back and we can help some more. Be sure and look at the other info on diet - it's very good too.

It's not unusual at all to find out that the people working in pet stores don't really know about how to care for a turtle. Occasionally you'll find a very knowledgable person but it's kind of rare. You should get your info from this forum and some of the other good forums out there. There are a lot of very experienced turtle keepers on here that will be happy to help.

[Sarah89]

Thanks so much. The info helps a lot. (:

[marisa]

Is the variety pack the container that contains three (I think) foods, including the pellets and shrimp? If so, the combo is rather high in protein.

If you can find it, try getting some Reptomin Baby for your hatchling. The size is easy for small turtles to eat, and it contains a bit more calcium than regular Reptomin.

[Sarah89]

Yeah, It had Krill, MiniSticks, and Shrimp. He handles the size of the food just fine, eats it in one gulp with no struggle. I just don't want to starve him or stuff him. He nibbles on his plants (Annacharis, I think it's called?) throughout the day. He actually snapped a branch off and took it with him under his floating dock, lol.