How to Take Care of Baby Red Eared Sliders (Beginners Guide)

Taking care of a baby red eared slider can seem quite daunting at first, but if you know what you are doing, or if you have a well-structured guide that can help you out, things can become quite easy and pleasant.

In order to take care of a baby red eared slider, you need to get a properly sized tank and a basking area, you also need to get the right food for a baby turtle, and learn how to properly maintain the water in the tank.

While it might seem that there are a lot of things to do, they are all very simple, and most of them you only need to do once. So let’s start with the most important thing, getting a properly sized tank.

Choosing the Right Tank

The first thing that you have to do when you get a baby turtle is to get a proper tank.

When it comes to turtle tanks the material or brand of the tank doesn’t matter, what’s important is that it is the correct size.

As a general rule, you want your tank to have at least 10 gallons of water for every inch of shell your turtle has.

Most baby turtles aren’t bigger than 2 inches, so a 20-gallon tank should be enough for now. But young turtles can grow quite fast, most baby red eared sliders grow up to 3 inches in their first year. So a 20-gallon tank won’t be enough for too long. So my suggestion is to go for the biggest tank that you can right from the start, as it will make your life much easier.

There are quite a few reasons why you want to get a big tank, that will at least follow the 10 gallons per inch rule, but the two most important are that a bigger tank means that the water won’t get dirty as fast, and your turtle will have enough space to swim around.

We will soon talk about cleaning more in-depth, but the short version is this: The smaller the tank the faster the water will get dirty, and you will end up having to clean the tank every 2 or 3 days due to the bad smell.

Overall I would say that there isn’t anything in particular that you should look for in a tank, except for how much water it can hold. As long as the tank is sturdy and won’t break easily it should be good for you and your turtle.

If you are not sure how to choose a tank you should check out our recommended products section and take a look at our picks for the best turtle tanks, from our personal experience with them.

After you choose a tank, you can’t simply fill it with water and place your turtle in it, you first have to make sure that the temperature of the water is right, otherwise, your turtle will get sick.

The Temperature of the Water

Red eared sliders are cold-blooded reptiles, this means that they can’t generate their own body heat, which makes them reliant on the temperature of their environment, and in this case, that environment is the tank.

Red eared sliders need a water temperature of around, 80° Fahrenheit (27° Celsius). But all baby turtles require higher temperatures than adults so a baby red eared slider needs a water temperature of 85° Fahrenheit (29° Celsius).

If you ever search online about what temperature a baby turtle needs, keep in mind that you will most likely find the temperature that adults need, unless it’s otherwise specified, in which case you have to slightly increase the temperature by a few degrees to get the one for a baby turtle.

Getting the water to 85° is quite simple, but you will need a water heater. Just be careful when you choose one, most water heaters on the market are designed for fish tanks so they aren’t able to resist in a turtle tank. So you want one that comes with a guard or some kind of protection.

Here is a link to the tank heater that I’ve been using for the last 5 years: Submersible Aquarium Heater. I don’t have too many things to say about it, it’s a good and reliable heater, it comes with a guard, and you can easily select the temperature. So everything that you want from a heater.

One other article that you might want to check out is this one: How to Make Tap Water Safe for Turtles. Not all tap water is safe for turtles, so you should make sure that the water that you add to the tank is not bad for your turtle.

Now let’s move to the next part, the basking area.

A Proper Basking Area

A basking area is essential for a red eared slider, as well as every other turtle. The basking area provides UVB rays as well as heat, so you have to make sure that everything is in order.

In short, a basking area is basically a platform on which your turtle can get up and spend some time in “the sun”. You can either build your own basking area or buy one.

Here is a link to Pinterest if you want to get a few ideas on how to make a Basking area, and here is a link to Amazon if you want to buy one.

The platform itself is not that important, it just has to be solid and stable enough for your turtle, what’s important is the light.

Red eared sliders need two special light bulbs, one of them to provide heat, and the other to provide UVB rays.

UVB light plays a vital role in the production of Vitamin D3 which is essential for the calcium in the body. Without UVB light turtles wouldn’t be able to get the proper amount of calcium which can lead to improper bone growth, metabolic bone disease, softshell, shell rot, and many other bad things.

The heat bulb provides heat that turtles desperately need since they are unable to produce their own body heat.

Now let’s see how to choose the right bulbs for your turtle.

When it comes to UVB light, there are two types: bulbs and tubes, overall I would say that tubes are better but you can’t go wrong with either. Just make sure that you get UVB and not UVA, it’s quite a common mistake. While UVA light won’t hurt your turtle, it won’t do the same things as UVB light.

The last thing that you should keep in mind about UVB bulbs is that they stop providing UVB rays long before they stop producing light. On average I would say that a UVB bulb will only produce UVB rays for half of its lifespan, this is why I recommend changing the bulb once every 6 months.

Choosing a heat bulb is a little more complicated. You have to take into consideration how much heat your turtle needs, and the distance at which you will place the bulb.

Baby red eared sliders need a temperature of between 90° and 95° Fahrenheit (32° and 35° Celsius) in their basking area.

Heat bulbs are not classified based on temperature, so you won’t see a 90° bulb, instead, they are classified based on power, Watts, to be more precise. And depending on how many watts a bulb has, and how far you place it you will get a certain temperature.

Here is a chart that I made showing what temperature you should expect to achieve using different powered light bulbs at certain distances.

To make this chart I used a laser thermometer, and the average temperature of the room was 75°Farenheit (24°Celsius), so you might get slightly different results depending on the temperature of your room, but unless the difference is massive the temperature of the basking area should be similar.

With this quick guide you should be able to choose the right bulbs for your turtle, but if you want to know more details, and the possible alternatives you should check out this article where I discuss the subject more in-depth: Guide for Lighting and Heating a Turtle Tank and Basking Area.

A Balanced Diet

Now let’s talk about food.

What Baby Red Eared Sliders Eat

Baby red eared sliders are omnivorous, so they will eat fruits, vegetables, and meat. Baby turtles will have a similar diet to an adult, but with one major difference, they will need considerably more proteins.

A balanced diet will be like this:

80% pellets
10% fruits and vegetables
10% meat / dried insects

As you can see pellets will make up most of their diet, while fruits vegetables, and meat will be like snacks, or treats.

Baby turtles will need special turtle pleats which contain more protein than regular ones. If you can’t find pellets for babies you can always give them a little more meat or dried insects.

As you can imagine, there are a lot of different types of turtle food types and brands, and some of them are better than others. If you want to know which of them are the best and which you should avoid you should check out this article: Best Turtle Food (We Tested 20 Different Brands)

The last thing that you have to know about the diet of a red eared slider is how much you should feed it.

How Much You Should Feed Your Baby Red Eared Slider

The simplest way to find the right amount of food for your red eared slider is to follow the size of the head method.

The easiest way to put this method into practice is to find a small container, like a medicine cup, a shot glass, or a bottle cap. This container has to be approximately the same size as the head of your turtle, without the neck. Then you fill that container to the top, and then you can feed the food inside the container to your turtle.

You don’t always have to use a container, you can always just estimate the food that you would need to fill its head. If you sometimes give your turtle a little too much food, and sometimes you give it a little too much, things will be just fine. Your turtle won’t be affected by small differences.

This method works great because it takes into consideration the size of the turtle, and gives you a fixed amount of food that you have to give your turtle. And as the turtle grows the amount of food will change.

This method is also very easy to determine how often you have to feed your turtle. If you follow this method you will have to feed a baby turtle every day, a juvenile turtle every two days, and an adult turtle once every three days.

If you want to know what other feeding methods exist, or you want a more detailed feeding schedule you can check out this article: How Often and How Much Do Red Eared Sliders Eat? + Schedule

The last thing that you need to know about in order to take proper care of a baby red eared slider is how to keep its tank clean.

How to Keep a Red Eared Slider Tank Clean

Turtles are probably one of the messiest pets that you can have, so for a lot of people it’s a real challenge to keep the tank clean, but there are a lot of things that you can do to make things easier for yourself.

There are 3 main things that you can do to keep the water clean for longer, the first one is to feed your turtle in a different container, to get a proper filter, and to get a bigger tank.

We already talked about the taken at the beginning of the article so I won’t go over this part again, instead, we will focus on the remaining.

The Water Filter

Everybody knows that it’s impossible to keep a tank clean without a water filter, but what most people don’t know is that water filters aren’t rated for turtle tanks, instead, they are rated for fish tanks. This means that a filter that is designed for a 40-gallon fish tank won’t be able to keep a 40-gallon turtle tank clean.

When choosing a water filter you have to get one that is twice as powerful as the size of your tank. This means that for a 40-gallon tank you will need an 80-gallon filter.

As I said, filters are usually rated for fish tanks, and fish are not nearly as messy as turtles.

If you want to know what filter I am using, I would also recommend you to use it, you can check out this article: Recommended Turtle Tank Cleaning Gear, where you will find a few more cleaning products that I use and I’ve found to be really useful.

Now let’s look at what else you can do to keep the tank clean for longer.

A Different Container for Food

One of the biggest reasons why turtle tanks end up dirty really fast are small food particles. Those particles appear when turtles chew their food. And after 2 or 3 days they start producing bad smells and make the water cloudy.

Water filters will get rid of some of them, but no matter how powerful the filter is, it will have a limit. So the only proper way to get rid of them is not to have them in the tank in the first place.

This can be easily achieved by filling a container with water, and placing your turtle in it when it’s time to feed it. In a way, it will be your turtles’ very own dining room.

After your turtle is done eating you should let it rest for 10 minutes, or so, then put it back in the tank.

This method is very simple and 100% effective. Just make sure that you don’t use the container for anything else, like placing food that you want to eat in it. Turtles carry bacterias that can be harmful to us.

You will have to clean the container after you are done, but just putting it in the shower and washing it quickly shouldn’t take even a minute.

The whole process should take less than 5 minutes of your time since you don’t have to supervise your turtle while it’s eating. So you will lose a few minutes a week doing this, but overall you will save several hours since you won’t have to clean the tank as often.

How Often Should I Clean the Tank?

The tank should be cleaned as soon as it gets dirty, or starts to smell bad.

There is no exact amount of time that you have to wait before cleaning the tank. If you follow the instructions in this guide you will have to clean the tank every two or three weeks, or maybe once a week, if the tank is not big enough.

If you don’t have a good filter, the tank is too small, and you feed your turtle in the tank then you might have to clean it once every 2 or 3 days.

There are a lot of factors that can influence how often you have to clean the tank, but it’s safe to say that if you follow this guide you won’t have to clean it more often than once every week or two.

If you want to know what other things can make a turtle tank smell, and how you can prevent them you can check out those two articles: Why Does My Turtle Tank Smell? (How to Get Rid of the Smell) and Do Turtles Smell? What to Expect and How to Prevent.

And that’s about it when it comes to keeping a red eared slider tank clean, now let’s go over some common questions.

Common Questions

Should I Get More Than One Baby Turtle?

It all depends on how much time and effort you are willing to put to take care of them and the space that you have at your disposal. From my experience, there is not such a big difference between raising one baby turtle or two baby turtles, at least in the beginning.

When they are small they won’t eat any significant amount of food so you don’t have to worry too much about this part. Two, or more, turtles will definitely make more mess in the tank so you will have to clean it a little more often.

You will also need a bigger tank to keep them in, and as they get bigger they will need even more space and this can become a problem at some point.

There is also the fact that as turtles reach maturity they will start being aggressive toward each other. When they are babies they can leave peacefully together but as they reach adulthood this will change, so they will need more space so they don’t have to interact with each other all the time. Two of my turtles were so aggressive toward each other that I had to put them in separate aquariums at some point. But not all turtles will become that aggressive, this will depend on their species and their personality as well.

And if you want to get more than one turtle because you don’t want your turtle to be lonely you shouldn’t bother. In fact, they prefer it that way, if you want to know more about the social life of turtles check out this article on our blog: Are Turtles Social Animals?

Would I Get Some Water Plants?

Don’t bother with water plants if you want to keep them for decorative purposes, turtles will eat them very quickly. In the wild water plants are often one of their main sources of food, and even if baby turtles need more protein than adult turtles this won’t stop them from eating the plants. In my turtle tank, no plant has managed to resist more than a couple of days without being half-eaten. So plants as decoration are a waste of time, and plants as food are an option.

What Should I Do if My Turtle Looks Sick?

There is only one thing that you should do if your turtle looks sick, and that is to take it to the vet. Don’t look online for cures or solutions, turtles are hard to diagnose and not all the advice that you find online is good.

One thing that you have to keep in mind is that any turtle will need some time to get used to its new environment so during this time it might exhibit unusual behavior, which might make you think that your turtle is sick. To avoid any confusion my advice is to go to the vet as soon as you get your turtle.

Final Thoughts

This guide should cover everything that you need to know about taking care of baby red eared sliders. But in case you have any questions, you can always leave them in the comment section below and I will answer you as soon as possible.