To keep your turtle happy and healthy, you should feed them various meaty products, pellets, produce, and supplements. No single food is nutritious enough to give your turtle alone; they need many different foods to get the proper nutrition and prevent boredom.
Vegetables are essential in a turtle’s diet, whether omnivorous or herbivorous. Turtles also need lots of protein and calcium and enjoy the occasional flower or fruit for a snack.
Diet and Nutrition
What you feed your turtle depends on its species and age, so you should research your specific turtle before feeding it. Most turtles are herbivorous or omnivorous, and herbivores only eat plant matter, while omnivores eat both plants and meat.
One of the most important things to remember is to feed your turtle various foods. Turtles get bored quickly and lose interest in eating if you give them the same diet daily.
Typically, omnivorous adult turtles should receive a diet of about 50% protein and 50% produce. Typically, 25% of the protein should comprise meat products, while the other 25% should comprise pellets.
Omnivorous baby turtles eat more protein than adults and may barely touch their produce. Meat can make up as much as ⅔ of a juvenile’s diet.
Herbivorous turtles only eat plant matter, but 80% of their diet should consist of vegetables, while only 20% consists of fruits.
Baby turtles must eat daily, but adults only eat 3-5 times a week.
Produce
All turtles should get a variety of leafy greens every day, and they should also get a variety of fruits and vegetables every few days. Fruits and veggies should be finely chopped, making them easy for your turtle to eat.
The best produce to feed your turtle is those that float because you can leave them in the water for a time. Just be sure to remove the food every day before it begins rotting.
Here are the vegetables that are safe for them to eat:
- Romaine Lettuce
- Endives
- Swiss Chard
- Kale
- Parsely
- Green Beans
- Dandelion Greens
- Turnip Greens
- Clover
- Mustard Greens
- Kale
- Collard Greens
- Carrots
- Carrot Tops
- Squash
If you feed your turtle lettuce, only give them romaine and not iceberg or head lettuce because they comprise mainly water.
Here are the fruits that are safe for them to eat:
- Strawberries
- Figs
- Dates
- Raspberries
- Apricots
- Apples (in moderation — high in sugar)
- Pears (in moderation — high in sugar)
- Melons
- Mangos (in moderation — high in sugar)
- Tomatoes
- Guavas
- Raisins
- Peaches
- Kiwis
- Star Fruit
- Unpeeled Banana (in moderation — high phosphorous content)
It’s vital to core fruits like pears and apples because the seeds are toxic to your turtle.
Flowers
You can provide your turtle with certain flowers as an occasional snack to enrich its diet:
- Carnations
- Dandelions
- Hibiscus
- Roses
- Geraniums
- Nasturtiums
Aquatic Plants
Another option for providing your turtle with greens is to give them safe aquatic plants. Aquatic plants are an excellent option because they spruce up the tank before your turtle eats them and don’t go as bad as produce does.
Some safe aquatic plants to feed your turtle include:
- Water Hyacinth
- Elodea
- Duckweed
- Water Lilies
Fish & Insects
Protein-rich food like crickets, worms, and small feeder fish are essential to your turtle’s diet. Frozen or freeze-dried food is often better than live food, so I recommend feeding your turtle live food sparingly.
VCA Animal Hospitals explains the complications that come with feeding live foods:
“Depending on the size of the turtle, fish such as goldfish, guppies, or minnows may be offered. Feeding live fish can provide your turtle with the mental stimulation and exercise that comes with the challenge of chasing and catching its dinner.
Fish also can be a good source of calcium for turtles, as long as they eat the entire fish, bones and all. However, recently feeder fish have been implicated as carriers of parasites and bacteria that can infect the pet turtles that eat them. Therefore, if feeder fish are fed to turtles, they should be offered infrequently.
Smelt, mackerel, and other oily fish should be fed sparingly or avoided all together, as their high fat content may upset nutritional balance and lead to vitamin E deficiencies. A predominantly fish diet may also lead to a thiamine (vitamin B1) deficiency, so fish should only be offered as a small portion of aquatic turtles’ diets.”
Other live foods you can offer include tadpoles, frogs, earthworms, snails, slugs, moths, crickets, waxworms, mealworms, grasshoppers, and beetles. Be sure to get these foods from your pet store, and NEVER feed the turtle food you’ve caught yourself. You’ll have no idea what kind of diseases or contaminants food may contain.
Avoid feeding your turtle fish, chicken, or raw meat from the grocery store because they don’t contain the correct calcium-to-phosphorous ratio.
Pellets
You should give your turtle pellets with every feeding because they are a nutritious part of your turtle’s diet. Not all turtle pellets are healthy for your turtle, though. Check the label and select pellet food with a high protein percentage (around 40%) and a low rate of fat (less than 8%).
Just as you’ll offer a variety of produce to your turtle, you should offer a variety of pellets. Rotating pellet brands keep your turtle from getting bored and ensure your turtle is fulfilling all their nutritional needs. Another option is to combine several varieties of pellets into a container and feed them that way.
Some of the best turtle pellet brands include:
- Reptomin Floating Food Sticks by Tetra
- Aquatic Turtle Diet by Mazuri
- Natural Aquatic Maintenance Formula Turtle Food by Zoo Med
- Aquatic Turtle Formula by Fluker Farms
- Gourmet Aquatic Turtle Food by Zoo Med
Why Are Calcium Supplements Critical To Your Turtle’s Health?
In the wild, turtles add calcium to their diet by eating calcium-rich vegetation grown in calcium-rich soil. They may also add calcium to their diet by eating animals with shells, like snails.
The Calicum-To-Phosphorous Ratio
Turtles need more calcium in their diet than phosphorous. An ideal calcium-to-phosphorous ratio is 1.5:1, or 2:1. Without calcium supplements, a captive turtle’s calcium levels are likely too low, and they’ll have too much phosphorous in their diet.
Even turtle keepers with the best intentions have difficulty providing a diet with enough calcium.
The food we can provide to our turtles simply does not contain enough calcium as the food that turtles eat in the wild because wild vegetation typically tends to contain higher levels of calcium.
Although captive turtles get a wide variety of fruits and vegetables, those farm-grown foods tend to contain very little calcium. Or, if store-bought vegetables have lots of calcium, they tend to contain chemicals that prevent your turtle from absorbing the calcium.
Tortoise Trust explains which common store-bought vegetables seem to contain calcium but fail to provide a turtle’s body with the needed calcium:
“Mustard greens, turnip greens, kale, cabbage, bok choy, spinach, chard, and collard greens all fall into this category. One of the best known examples of such an ‘anti-nutrient factor’ is oxalic acid. Another is phytic acid, found in high concentrations in peas, beans and related legumes. It is therefore necessary to screen diets not only for gross calcium content, and calcium-to-phosphorus ratio, but also to screen them to exclude reliance upon plants that contain high levels of these ‘anti-nutrients.’”
Which Calcium Supplements Shouldn’t You Use?
Not all calcium supplements are ideal for your turtle, so you should take caution in choosing which is suitable. For instance, bone meal calcium supplements are not ideal because they contain high phosphorous levels. Turtle blocks are not ideal either because they only have low levels of calcium carbonate.
Ground egg shells are not recommended, despite having a high calcium-to-phosphorous ratio. They’re not recommended for turtles because they contain trace amounts of hormones and antibiotics with unknown effects on the turtles consuming them.
The Best Calcium Supplements
The best thing to do is find a calcium carbonate-based powder free of phosphorous. For your turtle’s health, choose a commercial-grade powder. Many of these powders come with additional D3 vitamins as well.
One of the best supplements you can use is Ret-Cal, but many reptile suppliers also sell similar supplements.
Limestone powder is the next best option if you don’t have access to calcium carbonate.
Cuttlebones are a good secondary source of calcium carbonate that you can provide to your turtles because they float in the water. Cuttlebones have a high calcium content, but your turtle’s body does not easily absorb the calcium, so you should only use them as a secondary source.
What Not To Feed Your Turtle
Certain foods aren’t healthy for your turtle, and you should avoid them altogether. Some of these foods include:
- Celery — too much fiber & low on nutrients
- Bread — high in starch & low in nutrients
- Plants with oxalates & goitrogens — prevent the metabolism of calcium
- Swiss chard
- Spinach
- Freeze-dried shrimp — high-fat content
- Dairy — turtles can’t digest this
- Frozen vegetables & fruit — lack essential vitamins
- Wild-caught insects & worms — may harbor disease & chemicals
- Avocados — toxic to turtles
Other Feeding Tips
There are some things you can do to make feeding time easier and more successful for you and your turtle.
Land turtles are awkward movers and less agile than their aquatic counterparts. Use wide, shallow bowls to feed them.
You can usually put food directly in the water for aquatic turtles, though you’ll need to be careful of dirtying the water. Many people move their aquatic turtles to separate containers for feeding time to keep the main enclosure clean.
Conclusion
Turtles need a wide variety of foods to get the proper nutrition and to keep from getting bored with their diet. Their diet requirements can be overwhelming for new turtle owners, but feeding your turtle can be fun once you learn what they can and can’t have.
Remember the most important rules when feeding your turtle: they need lots of greens and protein, but limit fruits and flowers.
FAQs
Turtles may eat poop to regain the healthy bacteria from their digestive tract. Eating poop is also a way to get the rest of the nutrients from their food that their body may not have absorbed the first time.
Turtles may eat rocks or pebbles because they lack minerals, are bored, or simply mistake them for food. It’s dangerous for turtles to eat stones and pebbles because they can get stuck, causing the turtle to choke or causing an impaction in the digestive tract.
Rocks or gravel inside your turtle’s tank should be larger than 0.5 in (1.27 cm) to prevent your turtle from eating them.
Turtles have a beak, but no teeth, so they can’t chew food as many animals do. Instead, they grab food and swallow it whole by pulling it down their throat with their tongue. Some carnivorous and omnivorous turtle’s beaks have serrated edges to make gripping prey easier.
