feeding?

[Tricia M]

Hi, right now i feed my dbt sowbugs, but i’m trying to ‘wean’ her on to floating pellets– has anyone else gone thru this sort of thing? how did you go by doing things? Right now i’m starting out with Vitakraft “Vita Terra” Reptile Pellets, (couldn’t find tetra reptomin, which was what i had planned on trying to feed her), when i feed her i normally move her into a seperate area and when she catches the bugs put her back in, i’m putting the pellets (wet) into the feeding area with the bugs, good idea or no? I’m just looking for some insight to things, thanks! 🙂

[Jonathan Helms]

When I am trying to switch my hatchlings over from bloodworms to food sticks. I normally put a much smaller amount of bloodworms and add small crickets. I my case to gets the terrapins to start looking up for food instead of down. Then I stop feeding the bloodworms and just feed crickets. Then I start putting less crickets and adding food sticks. Within a day or so they should start eating the food sticks. This worked for all thirty of my hatchlings this year. I don’t know how long you have been feeding them sowbugs, but I normally only feed mine bloodworms for four days and then crickets for about three days, so by a week or two they are only eating foodsticks. Now if they have been eating sowbugs for a long time it might take a while to break them. Good Luck Jonathan SM http://www.geocities.com/diamondbackterrapins

[guttata@vermontel.net]

I got my adults on pellets by JUST using pellets. I think if the terrapins see that all rthey have is pellets, they eat them realizing there is noting better around. But if you feed them live food, they realize that they can get live food and therefore don’t eat anything but live food items.

[guttata@vermontel.net]

I alos think people are impatient with there terrapins. They can go without eating for weeks if need be. Just because your turtle doesn’t eat pellets for a week doesn’t mean anything. It also takes a certain degree of will on the keeper’s part. Not to feel sorry for the turtle or worry about them not eatng to much. Just my opinion.

[William Battles]

Hey all, Might as throw my 2 cents in here since I’ve had problems trying to feed them pellets. I have 3 baby dbts. They were the size of quarters back in late March, but they are doing well. They are larger than silver dollars by far now (no tape measure on me at the moment). I started them off on bloodworms (the pet store like to call them blackworms). They ignored anything else I tried included pellets made for smaller turtles. They didn’t go for crickets…the crickets spent most of the type on the backs of the dbts when they surfaced or were sunning themselves. As they grew a little larger then they liked the free dried baby shrimp (gammare). Vitakraft sells them in large cans. It’s still their favorite food. . I’ve tried a mixed variation from Vitacraft that has the shrimp and the pellets. It’s helped them to get use to pellet type of foods. They are just now starting to like the T-Rex juvenile sized pellets for aquatic turtles. Only one of them will spit it out when they try to eat them. I have also taken minnows and cut them into bite size pieces (had to use a razor blade to make them small enough) and they absolutely loved it. I save the fish as an ccasionaly treat and some diversity to their lives. I also added to feeder guppies, but the dbts haven’t been able to really cacth any of them, but it gives them something to chase. One guppie even went as far to give birth…bite size morsels for the quick dbt. As they get a bit larger, I hope to switch them over to the reptomin pellets, but I still like to keep up the diversity of food selection. Question I would have is that since I live near a brackish marsh area, what foods could I feed them from the wild that wouldn’t poison or contaminate the tank? I have access to food they would normally eat in the wild when they are larger such as crabs (especially those little fiddler crabs), mussells, clams, etc. Will __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Get personalized email addresses from Yahoo! Mail http://personal.mail.yahoo.com/

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