Reptile & Amphibian Forums

A few weeks ago I purchased two baby res from a state fair. Little did I know that it was illegal to sell baby res if they were under 4 inches (or something like that). Anyways, I have them set up in a 29 gallon aquarium (for the time being) with all the necessary items, but I don't know what to feed them. I'm feeding them a floating stick food right now and they'll eat that fine, but won't touch anything else. I've tried green beans, carrots, chicken, dried crickets, cat food, etc. They seem to only go for the food that floats. I know that I can't just keep feeding them the commercial food and that they need more of a variety. But how can I get them to eat different foods? And also, what kind of feeder fish do you think they'd go for?

Baby RES tend to be more carnivorous and favor protein. I honestly can't get my res to eat most fruits or vegetables yet. Some say to "force" them by not giving them anything else until they are hungry enough to eat the veggies but I haven't resorted to that yet.
1. Try small pieces of cooked chicken or shrimp. They should learn to realize that it is food. I've also bought frozen mealworms as treats.
2. Try romaine lettuce or similar leafy vegetables. My turts definitely eat the lettuce.

If you got them recently, they may not eat very much at all. Mine took 2 weeks to really eat anything. Once they regularly start eating the pellets, you can try varying the diet and see what works. That's my two cents.

Oh, a guy in a pet store told me that baby res are too small for feeder fish. If anyone disagrees, definitely let me know as well since I am curious about trying them.

My RES likes the meat chunks out of the soft dog foods like pedigree. I feed a can to my dog and save out one peice for my turt, slice up the meat chunk into strips and feed it to her by hand. If I hold it so that half of it is in the water and held by my finger tips she eatsit righ up and loves it, she will go for that before anything else. But this takes a bit of trust on your part for them not to bite you. Also if they are babies, they may not eat alot of veggies, usually they don't like those too much until they are older.