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Good afternoon everybody,

For the past year and a half or so since my wife brought home a baby RES we had fed it nothing but turtle pellets on advice of a pets mart service personnel. The past month I have been doing some research on my turtle and was understandably shocked at the disservice and possible harm I was doing to Shadow. At the moment I have only been feeding Shadow pellets sparingly twice a week following the hollow head method with green/red leaf lettuce on the other days. I worked out this schedule as seen below:

Mon: green/red leaf lettuce
Tue: carrots
Wed: pellets
Thu: green/red leaf lettuce
Fri: variety
Sat: green/red leaf lettuce
Sun: pellets

I should add that Shadow is female and 2 years old, give or take, and shows curling at the edges of her shell with a possibility of very minor pyramiding. Her shell length is roughly 6-7 inches I guestimate.

So my question(s) if you managed to read this far is what amount of vegetable/fruit matter should be consumed by a turtle in a day? We have the hollow head method for pellets but does amount matter for vegetables and fruits? Is the worst that could happen by giving my turtle, say a leaf of lettuce larger than her body, a case of the runs? Do I just put a good sized amount in and at the end of the day net out what she hasn't eaten? I'm curious as to what amount you all out there feed your turtles their veggies.

Edit: Another question popped into my head, figured I'd add it to this post rather than making a new one. When people say you should feed your RES every 2-3 days do they mean altogether or just the pellets/proteins with veggies the days in between?

Two years old and a shell lengh of 6 - 7 inches?? (You measure the shell straight down the back from the scute behind the heat to the ones above the tail and don't include the curve of the shell. It's called the straight carapace length or SCL.) The curling of the marginal scutes and somewhat(?) raised scutes indicates that she was overfed a relatively high protein diet (which pellets usually are) before her diet was changed.

To answer your question about how much vegetables and fruit a turtle should be given, well, it depends. Experimentation is good here, and a turtle will usually let you know how much is too much. Either it will not be completely eaten or, if it is eaten and it's too much, a turtle's stool will be very fibrous, break apart easily and you'll see bit of ingested lettuce (not green) floating around in the tank. I try to offer a bit less than more and increase if needed rather than dealing with ripped up leaves and or extra poop.

For me, I give a greater amount of some veggies (dandelion greens, for example) than others (collard greens for example). I give some veggies more frequenly than others and I give veggies more frequently than fruit (but as a general rule my turtles get fruit a bit more in the summer when it's in season).

I don't know where it says you "should" feed your RES every 2 - 3 days...I tend to offer pellets/other foods every other day, but in smaller amounts. I offer some type of plant matter daily, even on the days when other foods are not being offered. Hope this helps.