"Customizing" carnivore turtle pellets

[Mount_Prion]

So I've been doing a bunch of pet food label reading and feeding experimentation, and I've concluded that my turtle has to be starved for a few days before he'll take reptomin sticks. And looking at their ingredients, they're probably not the best for him to eat, anyway. On the flip side, he instantly goes for massivores or carni sticks. This makes sense as he is a reimanni snakeneck turtle, and as such has a pretty much purely carnivorous diet.

Comparing the labels of the two products, they're very similar except that the hikari stuff has less vegetable matter in the first 3 ingredients. So probably he likes the hikari stuff because it has more fish/krill meal and less veggies, proportionally. The advantage to reptomin, however, is calcium.

So here's my plan, let me know if you think it makes sense:

I'm going to take a bunch of floating carni sticks and lightly spritz them with water. Then I'll dust the batch with calcium powder, and put it under a heat lamp or something to dry without molding. Seems like this could make for a good staple pelleted diet. Any thoughts?

He also eats a lot of frozen food (krill, P.E. mysis, etc) and a ton of nightcrawlers/red wigglers. Occasionally mealworms.

 

[Vicious_Fish]

Why not just feed a variety of pellets? It'll save you a lot of trouble. My turtles eat 5-6 different types of pellets. Some other foods I feed them that you can try would be fish fillets, thawed shrimp, crickets and earthworms.

 

[Mount_Prion]

Why not just feed a variety of pellets? It'll save you a lot of trouble. My turtles eat 5-6 different types of pellets. Some other foods I feed them that you can try would be fish fillets, thawed shrimp, crickets and earthworms.

I mean I can but he's really only interested in pellets designed for fish. I've mixing the carni sticks with reptomin and little fd shrimp but he'll just pick the carni sticks and shrimp out and leave the rest for the fish in the tank. And yeah, I feed the other stuff (except for crickets) regularly but not as a staple.

 

[wednesday13]

I think your idea will work just fine....I dose my turtle and fish pellets in Vita-chem supplement and let them dry out for a day before i use them. Dont think u need the heat lamp unless your making them that day, it dries fairly quick. Def. noticed an improvement in color and shell quality in my spiny softshell after using vitachem.

 

[Mount_Prion]

I think your idea will work just fine....I dose my turtle and fish pellets in Vita-chem supplement and let them dry out for a day before i use them. Dont think u need the heat lamp unless your making them that day, it dries fairly quick. Def. noticed an improvement in color and shell quality in my spiny softshell after using vitachem.

Yah, I actually put a bunch of vitachem and calcium powder into the containers that I buy the worms in a couple of days before feeding, that way the worms have some time to absorb them before being eaten.

Def a fan of the stuff.