hey im new, i bought some yellow bellied terrapins about 4-5 months ago and not sure what else to feed them, i give them pellets and a bit of bloodworm but im not sure wot other things i can give them? eg fresh fish (sprats), shrimp???? and also what type of veg can they eat????

thank you!!!

Rach

p.s its just it much be boring to eat the same thing everyday!

Fish, but preferably freshwater, shrimps either dried or fresh, mussels and other shellfish, but soak all saltwater fish in fresh water for a couple of hours first to remove excess salt.
Pond snails, but preferably ones you've bred yourself (very easy!) and not wild caught to avoid parasites.
They'll eat lots of different livefoods such as crickets and mealworms.

But you should avoid feeding too much high protein foods otherwise they'll grow to fast, become overweight, and suffer from bone and shell deformities.

A good brand of pellets provides an excellent basis for a balance diet, varied once or twice a week with any of the above but not in addition to the pellets.

You can offer them any aquatic plants that you'd put in an aquarium, they may eat them or may not, as young YBS tend to be more carnivorous and will only eat veg if there's nothing else!
Kale is another good one to try, but avoid other plants in the brassica family.
And the very best is Duckweed which most turts wolf down once they have a taste for it.

How much and how often are you feeding them at the moment?

thank you for repley was really helpful, we feed them twice a week

If they are less than a year old you should be feeding them every day, if you imagined their heads were hollow then the amount of food that would fit inside each would be correct.

Do they have a proper basking spot with a heat lamp and UVB? Without this they will be unable to raise their metabolic rate to the level where they are able to digest their food properly.

As they approach one year old you can stop feeding them one day a week, then a couple of days, until they are being fed every other day. By the time they are 3 or 4 you can feed them just a couple of time a week as you're doing now.

At least you're not overfeeding them which can be very serious, but underfeeding isn't ideal either and can still lead to health problems.

they are 2 and a half years old, and yeah they do have a basking spot which is on top of there rock and its completely out of water, they like to bask quite often mostly together, one is bigger than the other which ive heard one could me male the other female, but theres no diffrence in there tails??? ive heard they should be????

Do they have uvb? Without it they will die.

__________________
Take care
Sue

wizzasmum@aol.com

The bigger one is more likely to be female, but 2 1/2 is still a little young to be sure, 3 or 4 years is normally about the earliest you can tell for certain with sliders.

Females have a fairly short pointed tail, and the cloaca is roughly in line with the back edge of the shell, males have a longer, fatter tail, less pointed and with the cloaca further towards the tip.

Later on males will develop much longer front claws.

At the age they are it sounds as though you have their feeding routine about right, two or three times a week is fine at the amounts I suggested earlier. At this age they should be eating veg too, and they can have free access to it and eat as much as they like, in addition to the high protein foods.

they seem to be fine movin fine, eating well they love there veg too, but sometimes they leave a little bit and it just decomposes in the tank which then u have to clean them out (bit of a pain if youve just done it the day before!) ive heard u can take them out and put them in a sep tank with the same temp water as they are in and feed them in there? they can be a little shy so would they both still eat it eventually?

how long do i leave them in there if u can do that and do i put them somewhere so they cant see no-one then there will eat????

Does your filter not deal with the waste food? If it doesn't it sounds as though it's not big/powerful enough, or maybe it's just the wrong type of filter. With a suitable size external filter you should need to do very little cleaning at all, just occassional spot cleaning with a syphon or aquarium vac, and partial water changes now and then.

Yes you can feed them in a separate tank, I used to do this before I started using proper filters but now I don't have to bother. The problem is, especially if they're a little shy anyway, that hoisting them out of their tank and dumping them in another unfamiliar one is hardly likely to encourage them to eat.
They'll probably spend most of their time panicking and will become stressed, and that can lead to health problems.

I think you just have to accept that turts are messy eaters and deal with it.

Rach - do they have uvb?

__________________
Take care
Sue

wizzasmum@aol.com