All right, I have a baby Red Eared Slider (Lady Godiva) that I bought at a show and I went to the pet store and asked to see their selection of turtle food and what I should feed a baby, the lady who was helping me handed me a container of Rep-Cal Aquatic Turtle Food and said it would be fine to feed to the baby. My sister has since given me her Painted Turtle (Dragon) and her Red Eared Slider (Minerva) they are both at least 6-7 inches long and have no problem eating the food. Godiva is extremley small and is only about an inch long and her mouth is TINY and she can't eat the food the lady sold me. I have been feeding her fresh collard greens and spinich she seems to eat that well but I don't know if that's okay to feed her. can someone please help me?

collards are definitly a GREAT food source and probably the best green that can be fed to a reptile (very high in calcium). Pellets are ok to feed as part of a well balanced diet but shouldnt make it up entirely. Small feeder fish, crickets (gut-loaded), mealworms, superworms, waxworms(occassionally), collard greens, turnip greens, mustard greens, squash (zuccini and yellow), grapes, and bell pepper are some of the many vegetables and animal protien that you can feed.

go to www.resoasis.com and read up, paying special attention to the feeding section.

good luck,

__________________
-Adam

"Help Protect our Planet from Overcollection, Purchase Aquacultured Livestock and Captive Bred Herps"

Here's a post I made regarding turtle care that I'll just copy and paste for you

Cleaning
The enclosure won't stink if its kept clean enough. You'll need a filter for the water, but it needs to be the right kind. Filters meant for fish are often designed for a certain sized tank. In other words, when keeping fish in a 75 gallon tank, you get a filter designed to handle 75 galllons. However, turtles create FAR more waste than fish, and therefore you need a filter much stronger than that. The catch is, it also needs to be quiet, and create a low current. If the filter is noisy or makes a violent current, it will only bring enormous stress levels on your turtle cause he can't espape from the constant noise. Filter shopping will probably be the biggest trouble when getting supplies.

I also recommend you buy a syphon, like the ones made by Python. Its a bit pricey, about $1 per foot of hose, but its worth every penny if you ask me. The syphon connects to your faucet, and uses water pressure to suck the water out of your tank for you, and then pump clean water back in. Don't forget to dechlorinate the new water. It makes cleanup a lot faster, easier, and less messy. Clean the entire cage out about once a week. Soap is usually not needed, as you can suck out all the nasty water. Plus soap leaves suds, and you have to rinse extremely well to keep any suds from remaining after you fill it back up for your turtle. Avoid bleach always. Algae, though some find it ugly, is no threat at all to your turtle, so its no big deal if there's any in the tank. To make cleanup easier, you may consider feeding your turtles in a seperate container, like a large plastic tub or something. They make a lot of mess when they eat, and tend to go to the bathroom not long after eating, so having them in a seperate container will reduce the mes in their tank.

Water
The water area should take up the vast majority of the tank. There's no need to heat the water. Its a place for the turtles to cool off a bit if they get too warm. It should be about 70 degrees though, so you may want to get an aquatic thermometer, but its not as important as having one for the land. You can't use tap water as it is, you need to dechlorinate it first. The old method of leaving it sit in a bucket for a day is not good enough. Although this does remove the chlorine, it doesn't remove chloramines, or detoxify heavy metals. You can either buy a water filter, like a Brita, or you can use a dechlorinating agent, such as Stress Coat or Reptisafe. I much prefer Reptisafe than Stress Coat. Stress Coat is made for fish, and contains aloe vera. Reptisafe is made by Zoo Med, and is designed for reptiles. It also contains helpful electrolytes. Be sure to keep the water clean. After all, its the turtle's drinking water, bathtub, dinner table, and toilet all at once.

Heat/UVB
You have two options when it comes to heating and lighting, and one is probably better than the other, but I'll give you both anyway.

1. You could buy an aluminum dome reflector lamp "clamp lamp". For heat, don't waste your money on one of those fancy "basking lights" or anything like that. A normal house bulb will do just as well. Place the lamp over the basking area in the tank. Here you'll need a thermometer in the tank, to keep track of the temperatures. The basking area should be about 85 degrees F, so use whatever wattage gets you that result. I used to use a 100 watt.

That just creates light and heat, you still need UVB lighting if you don't want your turtle to die of metabolic bone disease. There's only one type of incandescent bulb that produces sufficient UVB, called mercury vapor, and the rest are all fluorescents. Not all are created equal though, but Zoo Med makes a good bulb called Reptisun. I'd get a Reptisun 5.0 or 7.0, or an Iguanasun, its the same bulb. UVB is filtered out by solids like glass and plastic, as well as by water and even fine mesh. For this reason, your lid needs to be screen and must be at least 1/89th inch squares or larger. Its either that, or just don't use a lid at all. Now, this is very important. Fluorescent UVB lights cannot push the UVB rays beyond 10-12 inches. Therefore, the bulb must be closer than that to your turtles to be of any use. Fluorescent UVBs also stop producing adequate UVB levels after about 6 months, and therefore need to be replaced often, even if light is still being produced. Another problem is that the UVB light also needs to be over the basking area. This means yo have to have two lights focused on one spot, which can be hard to do. Plus it uses up two outlets.

2. The best method for providing heat and UVB for turtles is the mercury vapor light. This bulb is the only reliable UVB light that comes in an incandescent form. Lucky for you, a self-ballasted MV light also produces heat (externally ballasted ones do not, keep that in mind). These bulbs get hot, so you'll need a dome lamp built to handle at least 100-150 watts. MV lights project their UVB much further than fluorescents, so the bulb should be at least a foot away from the turtles. They also eliminate the need of a seperate bulb, freeing up an outlet and having the heat and UVB coming from one source. They are more expensive than fluorescents, but they are worth it.

Diet
Turtles need a varied diet. These are some things you can offer, and you should use all of them that you can get ahold of. The more variety the better. Painteds are primarily carnivorous, so offer crickets, cockroaches, zophobas (superworms), silkworms, cutworms, waxworms, butterworms, mealworms, live fish, pinkie mice, tadpoles, small amphibians, krill, brine shrimp, squid, crayfish, ghost shrimp, etc. They should also be offered a percentage of plant matter, though it may take time before they actually learn to eat it. Collard greens, bok choy, romaine lettuce, dandelion leaves, yellow squash, etc are good greens ones. Also add turtle pellets to the diet. Be sure they're meant for aquatic turtles, but don't use them as the only thing in their diet. Feed your turtlles every day when they're juveniles, and every other day or every 3 days as adults.

Nutrition
Since it is extremely difficult to use powdered supplements for an aquatic animal, you'll need to follow some guidelines when it comes to nutrition. For starters, not any small fish is a good food for your turtles. Avoid goldfish. They're the junkfood of fishes. For small turtles use danios, tetras, guppies, and baby mollies. For adults, feed adult mollies, larger tetra species, minnows, and really any cheap freshwater fish in the pet store will do, with the exception of goldfish, plecostomus (pleco/algae eater), and catfish (like corydoras "cories"). I highly recommend you try breeding your own mollies. They breed like crazy, and then you can be sure the mollies are being fed a nutritious diet. The nutrition you put into the fish will then be passed on to the turtles. Feed them mealworms, waxworms, butterworms, and pinkie mice only occasionally. Mealworms are high in chitin, and may block up your turtle if fed too often. Waxworms, butterworms, and pinkies (baby mice) are too high in fat to be made a major part of the diet. When feeding them dandelion leaves, buy them from a store, or be absolutely sure the area you collected them from is free from all chemicals. Pesticides, fertilizers, etc are all bad, keep run-off in mind too.

You can't just buy crickets, cockroaches, etc and just feed them straight to the turtle. You have to gutload them first. This means keeping the crickets alive in a seperate container for at least a day and feeding them nutritious foods. The nutrition is then passed on to the turtle. If you don't do this, you're just filling your turtle up, but he's not going to get much out of it. You need to buy a good reptile vitamin supplement and a good calcium supplement. Rep-Cal makes some of the best ones out there, so I'd go with them. Feed the crickets greens, like collards, bok choy, romaine, etc. Vegetables, like squash, beans, carrots, etc. Fruit, like apples, bananas, pears, etc. Grains, like whole-wheat bread, whole-grain cereals, oatmeal, etc. And protein, like dog food, monkey chow, etc. You can take some of each of these, and grind them up, or add it to a blender. Add some of the calcium supplement and vitamin supplement too, and this is what you can feed to the insects. Keep leftovers in your fridge. If all that is to much, you can also just buy commercial cricket food, but you still need to get the vitamin and calcium supplements.

Remember that turtles are for looking at, not handling. They don't appreciate it at all, and you risk the germs they may carry. All reptiles, but turtles in particular, can be high carriers of salmonella. Alwways wash your hands thoroughly afer handling the turtles or cleaning up after them.

Hopefully all that helps you out Smile Turtles are not what I'd call "easy maintinence" pets. Nor are they cheap to maintain, but they're not as difficult as all that makes them seem.

__________________
+5 bonus points to whoever finds me a job!

"Eagles may soar, but weasels don't get sucked into jet engines." - John Benfield

That was such an informative post that I had to print it out for a lady I work with who has 2 yellow bellied sliders that are near adult size and in need of an informed care-taker. The lady seems very concerned about her turtles health now so that is what counts. I hope you don't mind me sharing your words Furryscaley. I am not making money off of it I swear. LOL

No problemo I always wind up typing super long replies to turtle questions, that one day I just saved one of them so I don't have to redo it every single time. This post will tide me over until I get an actual caresheet typed up one of these days. It applies to mainly to cooters, sliders, and painted turtles (genera Pseudemys, Trachemys, and Chrysemys).

__________________
+5 bonus points to whoever finds me a job!

"Eagles may soar, but weasels don't get sucked into jet engines." - John Benfield

when I had my painted turtle, he grew up nicely on cheap turtle pellets and occasional small fish caught in a local creek.

although some may say wild caught fish are bad to use, i figured it was the best to use since my painted turtle was also wild caught.
caught him when his shell was only an inch and a half long and had him for 6 years. i would still have him now if he haden't escaped from his outdoor pen 2 summers ago during a heavy rainstorm.
if your turtles are captive bred, then wild caught fish might not be the best for em.


also...
does your painted turtle hibernate during the winter? mine always did. even if kept indoors for the winter.

I would try to get Reptomin Baby turtle food, very small little pellets for small turtles. When RES are babies they are mainly carnivorous, so don't use greens as a large part of the diet.

when red ears are small, they are carnivorus, so feed ing it plants may result in problems, I raised mine on bits of hamburger and raw meat, and it worked fine, also, are you keeping the bigger turtle in the same cage?, cause if you are, you should feed them sepratly, because the big one can acsidentily hurt the little one quite badly while feeding.