Three tips To Make Caring For Turtles at feeding time easier

When caring for turtles, feeding time for your pet turtle is one of the moments when you and your turtle come into contact and there is almost a mutual understanding of exactly what is happening. Your turtle acknowledges that you are a friend with food and willingly comes over to take bites out of the meal you provide it. Even though this should be a straight forward task, there are a few mistakes turtles owners (particularly first time owners) make and it sometimes can cause more trouble than the good intended. Here are a few tips to make turtle feeding easier for you and your turtle:

1) Feed your turtle in a separate tank from their aquarium If you have an aquatic turtle it's always best to feed it in a separate tank or bowl instead of their aquarium. Turtles who are aquatic are messy eaters by trade and will leave alot of mess behind when they are tucking into a meal. By feeding a turtle in a seperate container this eliminates the chances of food particles left floating in the aquarium, which leaves the tank very dirty and affects the water freshness.

2) Supplementing the food with essential vitamins

Before you serve your turtle their food, use this time to drizzle or sprinkle some important vitamins over their salad mixture or whatever you're feeding them. Two essential vitamins that can be used as dusting or dressing for their food is:

*Calcium

*Vitamin A

Calcium can come in the form of a powder and you can obtain calcium powder from most pet stores or even online from a respectable source. All you have to do is sprinkle the calcium power over their foods and watch them gobble it up. Make sure to buy non-phosphorus calcium powder to ensure you don't unbalance your turtles calcium to phosphorus ratio.

Cod liver oil is a good source of vitamin A and can be drizzled over their vegetables before serving it to them.

3) Feed your tortoise in small amounts

One problem which comes with caring for turtles that owners have is the fact that their tortoise eats food in small amounts and often leaves their vegetables and fruits unattended for long periods of time, occasionally coming back to nibble on it later. The problem with this is if there is a large amount of food left over then it is likely to spoil. A good soultion to this problem is to serve your tortoise smaller amounts of meals through the day instead of one large meal all at once. When it comes to every serving of a small meal make sure they finish the meal completely before providing more. If this is impractical for you try measuring the amount of food your tortoise consumes in a day and provide them with that, so as to prevent any leftovers and food spoiling. Whatever foods are leftover at the end of the day must be removed you don't want any pest or parasites infecting it and your tortoise devouring that down.