Fly River Turtle - Feeding

[triquee79]

Will be removing plecos soon atm no such issues.

 

[coura]

the rep-cal bearded dragon food contains 29% protein, close enough to reptomin . been feeding my pnt this for a couple years now and he's doing fine. so :lipsseale, its only 30 dollars for a 5 lb bag, which goes a long way.

So your saying that flys dig in the Australin outback for grubs and bearded dragons dive in New guinea rivers for aquatic plants? Now seriously thouse animals have completly diferent dietary needs, the fact that it has 29% of prothein doesant say anything, you dont even know the sorce of it as well as the fact that 2 years its nothing regarding turtle growth and metabolism, the fact that it has "fared well" untill now doesant mean it will do it in the future. Maybe you can put it in a "passable way" if you feed it only once in a long wille, anyways any dry food is only a complement, even reptomin is, and in case of flys it must absolutley be complemented with fresh vegetables as well as a sorce of animal protein ocasinaly. I hope you havent feed your fly only pellets in the last 2 years

 

[coura]

zucchini is fine provided you can keep it firmly in place. Don't use anything sharp. Also try frozen peas, carrots, lima beans, corn (I dropped thawed frozen veggie mix in my FRT tanks). Also, kiwi is an excellent fruit to offer. Also offer your turt occassional cut earthworm, sinking sticks, chopped raw shrimp, cut mussel meat, white raw fish meat, etc. As the FRT grows, its need for animal proteins increases.

Check out the FRT info sticky at the top of this forum.

This one I defenetly have to coment If that is the vegetables you have been feeding to your flys some upgrades need to be made. Why? Because all thouse vegetables are poor food choices for herbivor reptiles (dont freak out they are not as bad as stuff people often use such as letuce and spinach). If I tryed to raise any tortoise, turtle or iguana on thouse alone they would get very serious metabolic bonne desiase in about 6 mouths. So why are they so bad? They all lack fiber, calcium, they are too high in phosphorus and oxalates, wich causes a unbalance of calcium phosporus in the organism and ultimatly causes metabolic bonne desiase. Also frozen veggys need to be cooked first because specialy thouse your using have tyaminase, bad stuff.
So if they are so bad why are your turtles healty? Because if your using that particular mix of animal food wich is very good by the way, I use the same for my turts, many such as woule fish and crustaceans are very rich in calcium wich aparently can balance the excess phosphorus from the veggys.
You have fared well but if you pick up my advice you can do even better All you have to do is reduce thouse same veggys your using alongside pumpkin, green beans ,strawberrys and tomatos to a lesser 40% of the vegetarian diet. For the 60% your going to use dark leafy vegetables such as mustard greens, water cress, collard greens, turnip greens and kale, along side butternut squash, cantelope, mango and papaya.
Your going to see healtier, more smooder growth turtles with shells resembling wild ones, garanteed

 

[triquee79]

Can someone recommend a good sinking pellet for the fly river turtles? My turtle only eats of the sand. Currently gauging on fresh market prawns and tomatoes.

I cannot seem to locate any online. Any website links would be much appreciated.

 

[Oddball]

sinking sticks from kensfish.com

 

[twk1]

Can someone recommend a good sinking pellet for the fly river turtles? My turtle only eats of the sand. Currently gauging on fresh market prawns and tomatoes.

I cannot seem to locate any online. Any website links would be much appreciated.

If you haven't already... give your turtle sinking algae wafers... They LOVE it!