Live feeder debate
- Thread starter Natalie
- Start date
The reason I see for feeding live feeder fish to a turtle is if the turtle refuses to eat prepared foods/pellets or the occasional treat of a few quarantined and gut-loaded live feeders to provide some enrichment to the turtle's life in captivity.
i do not think live food is always required but I have wild angels and they seem happier when I give them live,with some of your saltwater fish like mandarin gobies actually it's a dragonet has to be in a well established aquaria to survive as it eats the micro organisms in the live rock,I'm not an expert on turtles but if they are like fish as a treat every so often but not everyday.
Joe M;4947796; said:
At one point I had 3 outdoor turtle ponds with the smallest one being roughly 600 gallons and the largest 1200+ gallons. One had a pair of snappers, the second had Midland Painted and Stinkpots, and the third had Eastern Painted and Eastern Mud Turtles. Every pond had it's own assortment of natural food items such as Mosquito Fish, Fathead Minnows and Bluegill. Some of the ponds had Rock Bass and Yellow Bullheads as well. Other native food items included frogs, tadpoles, snails and aquatic insects. For the most part, they were all fed every couple of days in the summer by me which consisted of a prepared diet.
Over the years of observation I found that the Stinkpots and Muds didn't actively hunt the fish. They would however scavenge a dead fish in an instant. The same thing goes for the present ones I keep indoors who live with fish. Both subspecies of Painted Turtles also were not that incline to chase down fish. The snappers however ate anything they could catch.
All 4 species I presently keep now do get live feeders but that consists of earthworms, snails, crickets and dubia roaches.
^ Neat observation, thanks Vicious_Fish! I've seen several videos of mud/musk turtles that are housed with fish and don't actively chase them.
My goal is to have a huge tank like the one in the video below. (This guy has mud turtles, 20 cory cats, and ghost shrimp. I can't think of a better home for an aquatic turtle.)
[YT]T3mn7imoPEc[/YT]
My goal is to have a huge tank like the one in the video below. (This guy has mud turtles, 20 cory cats, and ghost shrimp. I can't think of a better home for an aquatic turtle.)
[YT]T3mn7imoPEc[/YT]
This video is a few years old but you can see my stinkpot pair that at the time I kept with a dozen Giant Danios, a female Convict Cichlid and a pleco. They never harmed a single fish but after swapping cichlids around, I added a Paratilipia polleni that ended up picking the danios off one by one.
[YT]y0a90RW_1mw[/YT]
[YT]y0a90RW_1mw[/YT]
I've almost always kept minnows in with my red eared sliders and a couple goldfish. The only time they ate a goldfish is when one died before we could get it out otherwise they don't go after the goldfish at all, how ever they will lazily chase the minnows but they don't actively chase em its more or less if one happens to get too close it winds up in the turtles mouth. I don't encourage my turtles to eat the minnows but they are there for em if the really decide they want one otherwise they mainly feed of 3 different types of pellets and dried shrimp and krill which my smallest one loves, but my bigger one doesn't even bother with, they also end up eating some of the fish food dunno why but they always eat a few flakes.
Natalie;4949690; said:
Thanks. It's a 100 gallon stock tank. That was really the only day the cat had access to the tank. I put her new box of cat litter next to it and she sat there for about 20 minutes watching the turtles and fish. For the most part she totally ignores all my reptiles and fish. It was just something new that day so she had to take advantage of it.
