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well, Krueger is getting smart with all my tricks and "veggie hiding" so it looks like I will have to try tough love and I'm so WEAK...lol. But it's been almost 3 days now and he is getting irritated and he is definitely no more interested in the pellets or veggies....so how long can he safely go without eating?????? any other ideas on how to intice him???? here's what i've tried and he HATES IT ALL.

romaine
ancharis
carrot
apple
grape
banana
nectarine

he actually ate a couple bites of a tomato, but then next time i offered it, he wouldn't eat it.

Ugh!

Sweet potato it was the first veggie my RES would eat and the only for a long time. Now he eats anything.

I'll try it! isn't it really soft? is it hard to give to them?

Sy likes Red leaf lettuce, sweet potato, and especially blueberries. I find he will eat lettuce best it I put it in a veggie clip, so he can grap it and pull off pieces. But he likes the red leaf so much that he tries to eat it while I'm still trying to get the stems in the clip! I just toss in a blueberry (the first time I had to cut it in half so he could see the inside and understand it was food) or a chunk of cooked sweet potato and let him have fun chasing it around the tank.

blueberry! i haven't tried that one..will do! he really prefers eating out of my hand or off the bottom of the tank...he might have fun rolling a bluberry around down there. i'll add red leaf lettuce and bluberry to the shopping list.

If he likes eating from your hand I think it helps to feed them by haand at first to get them interested. I used to wiggle his veggies in the water so he could "hunt" them.
Also, the BEST part about blueberries is they won't sink to the bottom right away! He trys to bit it and it shoots away and it looks kinda like he's a soccer player head-butting the ball! SO CUTE! I am going to video tape that one day and put it on Youtube.

Have you tried San Fransico Bay Aquatic Turtle Diet? It's frozen, they sell it at petsmart in the freezer with the other frozen fish foods and mice. It's got a lot of veggies in it, but a lot of things that turtles find delicious like krill, bloodworms, and fish oil. It might help him to get used to the tase of veggies a little, and if not, it's a good way to get some good stuff into a picky turtle.

i wondered if there was anything like that! i'll try that too!

Just nuke it in the microwave for a few minutes and cut off a bit. It sorta falls apart when they eat it in the sand but it is bright so it gets their attention.

Also with the leafed veggies, try without a stem. Crush will eat everything except the stem.

Try soaking some lettuce in tuna juice. That's how I got Toby to first try lettuce. Soak it for a few hours at least, I put it in a bowl overnight in the fridge. Try red or green leaf lettuce.

Green leaf lettuce. My turtle goes nuts for the stuff. He just randomly one day started eating veggies.

To your original question, they can go safely for a week without food, even longer sometimes. By the week mark, though, he should relent and eat either the pellets or the veggies.

Try strips of things, like sweet potato, carrot, mango, apple. The strips resemble worms. Also, blueberries, peeled grapes. I would probably avoid acidic foods, like oranges, lemons, those sorts of things.

will do! he's still refusing...but he is getting REALLY annoyed!!!!!!!!! i think he's MAD at me!!

computergremlin-like 7 full days?? man, he is MAD. he looked like he would jump out of the tank and eat ME. still won't touch a veggie or a pellet and FYI there are feeder fish in his tank and he hasn't eaten them either. he wants COOKED MEAT and that's it! *sigh* It's been 4 days.

I know it's hard but I went through this when I changed my birds off seed onto pellet diets. Birds need to eat ALOT more often then reptiles but I never hurt one of them switching over. I don't know if this is totally relivent, but with the birds, what I had to do was make sure they understood the pellets were FOOD. The company that make the birdfood I use makes this seed/pellet concoction that is amde to help change them over. Since all the seeds are stuck to the pellets they end up eating the pellets and learning it is food.

So, maybe he just needs to learn that veggies and pellets are food? I like the idea some people have about soaking the pellets in tuna water. What kind of meat is it that you have been feeding him? If he is eating beef or chicken maybe soak the pellet in alittle broth (the low sodium stuff) to get a flavor that he recognizes. Also, if you are not already feeding him in a seperate container, maybe taking him out of his tank will give him less distractions and he will eat. Conversly, if you are feeding him in another container, maybe he is too freaked out by the new enviornment to eat, and you could try feeding him where he is more comfortable.

i've tried soaking stuff in tuna juice...it didn't work. i think he knows it's food. if i put a veggie inside or next to a piece of meat, he will chomp it all down, then spit out the piece of veggie AFTER he had it all in his mouth already. also, i feed him by hand, so he pretty much knows if it's in my hand, it's food. his favorite is cooked chicken. i hadn't thought of soaking something in chicken broth...i'll try that one. he normally eats in his tank and i did try feeding him in a different container and he wouldnt even eat chicken in there...he was real nervous.