Feeding

While the Care Sheets provide suitable suggestions for both foods and feeding schedules, there are a number of options for how and when to feed your turtles. Some people find that the best way of feeding is to place the food on the turtle dock so that they can monitor how much food is left and easily remove it if necessary. However, as turtles are unable to eat out of the water, they will need to drag the food in the water first.

Other people prefer to feed in a separate container as this helps keep the main tank clean, and as turtles will defecate shortly after eating, it makes dumping the waste easy. This can cause problems, as some turtles can get very stressed by the constant handling and refuse to eat for quite some time.

With a suitable filter and feeding schedule though, feeding in the tank is fine, and can even be done by hand if your turtles are happy to do so. This way you can also monitor how much each one eats if you have multiple turtles, and this can be very helpful. If you just drop the food into the tank, then a net may be helpful to remove uneaten food, although ideally you don't want to be feeding them enough for them to be refusing food anyway.

Remember that the feeding schedules on the care sheets are a guide, and it's generally better to feed more food, less often as this is closer to nature. It's also best to try and feed them around the middle of the day if possible as this is their natural hunting time when they would be avoiding the strong midday sun.

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