How Long Can Yellow-Bellied Turtles Go Without Food?

At some point, every turtle owner will have to leave his turtle’s home alone for a weekend or two. And at that point, a few questions arise: Should I feed my turtle more before I leave, or should I do nothing at all? How long can turtles go without eating? So let’s answer those questions.

On average a yellow-bellied turtle is able to survive 3 months (90 days) without food. The amount of time can increase or decrease based on factors like age, size, environment, and prior diet.

If you were planning on leaving your yellow-bellied turtle home alone for the weekend you can do so without any worry. But if you are going to be away for more than a weekend you should know that while yellow-bellied turtles are able to live without eating for long periods of time, this is not necessarily something good for them.

Now let’s take a look at what happens if you leave your yellow-bellied turtle without food for one weekend, one week, 2 weeks, and 1 month. And after that, we will see how you can make sure that your turtle gets enough food while you are away on a vacation.

What Happens If a Yellow-Bellied Turtle Doesn’t Eat for 1 Weekend

This is probably the most common amount of time that yellow-bellied turtles are left home alone without food. And fortunately for them and for their owners nothing bad will happen to any turtle if it doesn’t eat for one weekend.

So if you are planning a weekend trip, you shouldn’t worry about your turtle at all, it will be completely fine.

What Happens If a Yellow-Bellied Turtle Doesn’t Eat for 1 Week

Under normal circumstances, nothing bad should happen if a yellow-bellied turtle doesn’t eat for one week, but if this happens regularly, small health problems might occur.

If this is only going to happen once or twice a year, you could theoretically leave your yellow-bellied turtle without any food, but if this is going to be something happening often, you might want to ensure that your turtle has some extra food in the tank, like plants or fish, or that somebody is coming over once or twice a week to feed your turtle.

After we are done talking about what happens if you leave your turtle without food for certain periods of time, we will cover what you can do if you have to leave your turtle home alone, so don’t worry, I will cover that part as well.

What Happens If a Yellow-Bellied Turtle Doesn’t Eat for 2 Weeks

While for humans the difference between one or two weeks without food is extremely significant, for yellow-bellied turtles it isn’t. So just like in the previous case, leaving your turtle without food for two weeks won’t have any significant impact if it happens only once or twice. but if it were to happen more often, the effect on the health of the turtle will be severe.

What Happens If a Yellow-Bellied Turtle Doesn’t Eat for 1 Month or More

If a yellow-bellied turtle doesn’t eat for one month or more, the first thing that will happen is that it will move less to conserve energy. The immunity system will stop working accordingly, and infections will start appearing.

A pet yellow-bellied turtle that hasn’t eaten in a month will either try to escape the tank, in search of food, or it will try to hide away from possible predators as it will feel weakened and unable to defend.

Another thing that will happen is that the turtle will stop growing. The vitamins, minerals, and energy that under normal circumstances were used for growth, will be redirected by the body to keep the vital functions running.

While there might be a few more things left to say about what happens if a turtle doesn’t eat, I think it’s pretty clear what’s the general idea.

Now let’s see how we can avoid those things.

Leaving Your Yellow-Bellied Turtle Home Alone for Long Periods of Time

I already have an entire article dedicated to this subject, so in this one, I will only cover the basics. If you want a more in-depth guide you should check out this article: Guide for Leaving Your Turtle Home Alone.

Now I am going to tell you what you can do to make sure that your yellow-bellied turtle is properly fed while you are away on a long and well-deserved vacation. Depending on how long you are going to leave your turtle home alone you might want to use all of those methods or just a few of them.

Aquatic Plants

One of the simplest things that you can do is to add some aquatic plants to the tank.

Yellow-Bellied turtles are omnivorous so they can eat plants as well as meat, so a couple of plants will provide quite a healthy meal for them while you are away.

The only downside of those plants is that the water will get dirty a lot faster. When turtles bite them, they always live in small parts floating through the water, this is inevitable. But other than that plants are ideal if you were to leave for a weekend or a week.

Aquatic plants can usually be bought at pet stores. Pet stores don’t usually sell plants that are bad for turtles, but just to avoid any problem make sure that you tell them what you want them for.

Feeder Fish

The next solution is to buy some feeder fish. Feeder fish are the kind of fish that you would normally keep as pets in an aquarium. But in this case, they will be a food source for the turtle.

Just be careful that there are some fish sold in pet stores that aren’t good for yellow-bellied turtles due to various reasons like” too much fat, too many bones, or they are hard to catch.

Pet shops employees should know which fish are good for a yellow-bellied turtle, but just in case there are a few species that are suitable to be feeder fish:

Killifish
Guppies
Mosquitofish
Platies
Bluegills
Bass
Crappies

After you get them from the pet store you just place them in the turtle tank.

And just like aquatic plants, feeder fish will make a mess in the tank, but this is something that can’t be avoided.

Automatic Food Dispenser

Probably the simplest solution to the food problem is to get an automatic food dispenser. I personally find this method very comfortable, and it will also come in handy when you are at home but you have a busy schedule and you don’t have that much time to look after your turtle.

This is the model that I use: Eheim Turtle Feeder, I haven’t tried any model besides this one, but at the moment I don’t have any reason to do so. What I really like about this model and I haven’t seen this at any other models is that it’s very flexible. You can have it release food to your turtle up to 4 times per day, and it can be a double or a normal serving. It is important to remember that it can hold a limited amount of food, but I never had any problem with that. But if you are going to leave for 3 months you definitely need to have somebody come over and refill it once a month. If you want to see the dispenser here is a link to Amazon.

Have Somebody Come Over

This is probably the solution that most people think of when they have to leave their turtle home alone for long periods of time.

The only problem with this method is that people who don’t own a turtle don’t know how important it is to give the proper amount of food, and not to simply grab a handful of pellets and throw them in the tank.

What I like to do when I have somebody come over to look after my turtle is to write on a piece of paper exact measurements, or if I have time portion the food in small recipients. This way when they will know exactly how much food to give.

Final Thoughts

Yellow-Bellied turtles can go a very long time without food, in the wild, it’s actually quite common for a turtle to go without food for a week or two. While this isn’t good for their health, and it will affect their lifespan, there won’t be any immediate effects.

In the case of pet turtles leaving them without food for a weekend won’t affect them in any way. If you were to leave them without food for a week, once or twice a year, they should still be fine, and there should be no long-term effects.

But if you were to leave them without food for more than 2 weeks, and this was to happen multiple times a year, then their health will take a turn for the worse.

My advice is to not worry if you are going to leave for only a weekend. But if you were to leave for more than a weekend, you should add some aquatic plants, or some feeder fish to the tank, use an automatic food dispenser, or have somebody come over and look after your turtle.