Painted Turtle Care Sheet (Beginner Guide + Pictures)

When I got my first painted turtle, I was completely lost, so I quickly searched for a care sheet, but all I could find were care guides that told me where they live, how big they get and other not-so-practical information. So I had to learn things the hard way.

Now that more than 5 years have passed, it seems that most care sheets still cover the same things, so I decided to make my own care sheet which covers things that really matter, and which you can only learn through experience. Here are some of the things that I will cover in this guide:

• What to feed your painted turtle
• What to avoid feeding your painted turtle
• How to feed your painted turtle (2 different methods)
• 3 different feeding schedules based on age
• How to set up a tank (tank, heater, filter)
• How to set up a basking area (platform, heat bulb, uvb bulb
• Painted turtle lifespan and size
• How to determine the gender of your painted turtle
• Possible strange behavior

The Diet of a Painted Turtle

Painted turtles are omnivores, which means that they will eat fruits, vegetables, as well as meat, insects, and pellets. A well-balanced diet for a pet painted turtle will be mainly based on pellets, with the occasional fruits, vegetables, and dried insects.

What to Feed Your Painted Turtle

Overall there are a few things that painted turtles can’t eat, so to make things simpler to remember I will divide what they can eat into 5 categories, and tell you what painted turtles can’t eat since this list is shorter. The 5 categories are:

• Fruits
• Vegetables
• Meat
• Processed food
• Pellets

Fruits

Most fruits are good to eat, but there are some that aren’t good for turtles due to the high amount of phosphorus or citric acid that they contain. Citric acid irritates the stomach of a turtle, and phosphorus blocks the absorption of calcium shock is essential for a healthy bone structure and shell.

So here is a list fruit that you should avoid:

• Raisin
• Prune
• Date
• Avocado
• Guava
• Banana
• Coconut
• Kivi
• Persimmon
• Cantaloupe
• Apricot
• Pomegranate
• Honeydew
• Nectarine
• Mulberry
• Peach
• Orange
• Lemon
• Lime
• Grapefruit

So if you don’t find fruit on this list, it’s good to eat.

If you want a more in-depth explanation about fruits and turtles you can always check out my article: Can Turtles Eat Fruits? (How Much, How Often + List)

Vegetables

Just like fruits, vegetables are great for turtles, but there are some that contain a lot of phosphorus. Besides those other vegetables that you should avoid are iceberg salad, cucumbers, eggplants, and mushrooms. While those vegetables won’t harm your turtle in any way, they also have little to no nutritional value for your turtle.

Here is a list of some vegetables that contain a high amount of phosphorus, which you should avoid:

• Corn
• Asparagus
• Beets
• Peppers
• Pumpkin
• Cauliflower
• Brussels Sprouts
• Carrots
• Broccoli
• Sweet potatoes
• Green Beans
• Squash
• Romaine Lettuce
• Turnips

So if you don’t find a vegetable on this list, it’s good to eat.

Meat

In general, all meat is good for turtles, whether it comes from a cow, chicken, pig, or fish. Just make sure that the meat doesn’t contain fat, and it doesn’t have any bones in it.

And for safety, you might want to cook the meat. Just make sure that you don’t add any condiments to it. While for us condiments add to the taste, turtles make little to no difference in taste, and can actually harm them. So no salt, pepper, or any other kind of condiment on the meat. 

Processed food

Processed food is bad for turtles. So no kind of processed food for them. So no cheese, bread, pasta, salami, sausages, bacon, or chips.

Pellets

While pellets can be considered a type of processed food they are made especially for turtles so they are ok.

But as you can imagine there can be some significant differences based on the brand of the food, so if you want to know which those differences are and which one is the best I would recommend you to check out this article where I and the rest of the members of Turtleowner.com, choose the best turtle food on the market, based on our years of experience and a lot of research: Buyer’s Guide: Best Turtle Food.

Now that we covered what painted turtles can eat we should also take a look at how to properly feed them since this is just as important.

How to Feed Your Painted Turtle

Over the years I’ve read about countless methods of feeding turtles. But out of all of them, two stood out the most, as being the most used and the most efficient. And they are the 15 minutes method and the size of the head method.

The 15 Minutes Method

The 15 minutes method is very simple, you give your turtle a lot of food, and let it eat for 15 minutes. After that, you remove the food.

As simple as this method might be it’s definitely not the best one of the two. This is because painted turtles, wild or pets, are opportunistic feeders by nature. This means that they will eat everything that they can in the fastest time possible because they don’t know when they will have the chance to eat again. Even if you feed them regularly they will not abandon this mentality.

While this is one of the most popular methods it’s starting to lose a lot of popularity lately due to the risk of overfeeding.

The Size of the Head

This method says that you should feed your turtle the same amount of food that it would take to fill its head (without the neck) if it were hollow.

The simplest 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 feed the food inside the container to your turtle. And that’s all.

You don’t always have to use a container, you can always 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, there won’t be any problem. Your turtle won’t be affected by small differences.

This method does a great job 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 is the method I use to feed all my turtles, and the results are great. During my research, a lot of people that used this method had great results, and nobody had any problem with it.

Between the two methods, I would definitely recommend you the size of the head method. Besides the reasons that I already listed, there is another important reason. It allows you to have a more diversified feeding schedule.

Painted Turtle Feeding Schedule

The first thing that you have to take into consideration when thinking about how often you have to feed your turtle, or when making a feeding schedule, is the age of the turtle. Baby painted turtles need a different amount of food than juveniles, and juveniles need a different amount of food than adult painted turtles. So let’s take a look at each age group.

Feeding Schedule for Baby Painted Turtles

Out of all the age groups, baby turtles need to eat the most often. This is because they need a lot of energy to grow. When turtles are at this stage in life they experience the fastest growth rate. And to be able to grow so fast they will need a lot of energy that they will get from eating.

So baby painted turtles should be fed every day using the size of the head method. 

Feeding Schedule for Juvenile Painted Turtles

Turtles grow from babies into juveniles. Painted turtles are considered juveniles when they are 1 year old.

A juvenile won’t grow as fast as a baby turtle, but it will still grow faster than an adult. So it still needs to be fed quite often. Here you have two good options.

You can either feed your painted turtle once every two days, the amount of food that it will take to fill their head. Or you can feed them half of that amount every day.

There is no difference for them if you feed them every day, or if you feed them every two days, as long as the amount of food is right. So it’s up to you to choose which way you want to do it. I would recommend you to feed your juvenile turtle every two days, this way the chances of you forgetting to feed your turtle are smaller.

And if it ever happens that you forget to feed your turtle once, don’t worry. In the wild painted turtles can go weeks without eating. So your turtle won’t be affected at all.

Feeding Schedule for Adult Painted Turtles

Adult painted turtles grow very slowly, and after some time they will not grow at all. So they won’t need as much food as babies and juveniles.

Painted turtles are considered adults when they reach 2 years.

The best way to feed your adult painted turtle is once every 3 days, using the size of the head method. This might seem enough food when you compare it to the rest of the age groups, but remember that due to the way the size of the head method works, the size of the food portion also increases so there is no problem, your turtle is getting way more food than it got as a baby when it was eating daily.

How to Set Up the Tank of a Painted Turtle

The tank is where your painted turtle will spend most of its life so it’s important to make it as comfortable as possible. Luckily for us, painted turtles don’t require too many things in their tank, but the things that they require are completely essential.

Here is a list of things that you need to make the perfect painted turtle tank setup:

• A properly sized tank
• A water heater
• A water filter
• A basking area
• A heat lamp
• A UVB lamp

The Tank

The most important thing that you have to do when choosing a tank for your painted turtle is to make sure that you follow the 10 gallons per inch of shell rule.

As you can probably guess the rule implies that for each inch of the shell that your turtle has the tank should have an extra 10 gallons. So if your painted turtle has a shell length of 3 inches, the tank should be able to hold at least 30 gallons.

While the rule is quite simple to follow, it’s actually quite easy to screw things up. This is because when choosing a tank people don’t take into account that their turtle will grow. Young painted turtles can grow more than one inch per year, so it’s important to take this into account as well.

Depending on the age of your turtle, my suggestion is to get a tank that is at least 20 gallons bigger than what you need right now. This way you won’t have to change the tank every year.

As for which tank to get, from my experience I can tell you that there is no difference between the ones that I owned. Usually, the water filters, heaters, and other accessories are low quality, or simply not good for a turtle so you should avoid them. So my advice is to go for the cheapest one. All you need is a sturdy tank that is big enough for your turtle. It doesn’t matter if you get it from Amazon or from your local pet shop.

The Heater

After choosing a tank, it’s time to choose a water heater.

Painted turtles need a water temperature between 75 and 80 degrees Fahrenheit. So the first thing that you want your water heater to be able to do is to reach this temperature.

The next thing that you want from your water heater is to have an adjustable temperature. This is important because during the winter the water in the tank tends to get colder, while in the summer it tends to get warmer. So your heater needs to be able to adjust to the temperature changes.

Another thing that you want in a heater is a guard. A lot of heaters are designed for fish, who aren’t as strong and agitated as turtles, so if they don’t have a guard they will eventually break.

I’ve recently (1 year ago, so maybe not so recently) purchased a new heater for one of my tanks, and I couldn’t have been more pleased with it. This heater is the Zoo Med Turtle Therm Aquatic Turtle Heater, this heater is able to heat up a 100 gallons tank up to 78 degrees, and it had no problem maintaining 80 degrees constantly in my 70 gallon tank. The guard is extremely resistant, and the suction cup that keeps it on the tank has never failed. So if you are looking for a good and sturdy heater for your painted turtle tank, I suggest you get the Zoo Med Turtle Therm Aquatic Turtle Heater.

The Water Filter

Now it’s time to look for a good water filter. Water filters play a vital role in any tank, as they are responsible for keeping the water clean. So it’s very important that you choose a good one.

All filters are rated based on how much water they can filter, so all filters will say that they are good for a 20 gallon tank, for a 50 gallon tank, 70 gallon, etc.

So you would think that for a 30 gallon painted turtle tank you will need a 30 gallon filter. But you would be wrong. Most water filters are tested in tanks that contain fish, but painted turtles are considerably messier. So for a 30 gallon painted turtle tank you will need a 60 gallon water filter. 

Two other important things that you want from a water filter are for it to be silent and clog proof. If your filter gets clogged easily it won’t be able to filter anymore. As for the silence part, I believe that nobody wants a loud device in their home that runs non-stop.

I am personally a long-time fan of the Fluval Filters Series. Over the years I’ve tried a lot of different water filters, and I’ve had mixed results, but once I discovered the Fluval filters, I never looked for anything else. 

Unlike most filters on the market, the Fluval Series allows you to easily change the filtration medium, which is great because based on the water that you use in your tank you will need a different medium.

Another thing that made me become a fan, is that none of my filters ever clogged. And not having to spend every weekend unclogging my water filter really made a difference for me.

As for the noise, I will be honest with you and say that it’s not completely silent. It’s not loud but you will probably be able to hear it. If you don’t keep the tank in your bedroom, there should be no problem. If you keep it in the living room where the TV is you will most likely not even notice it.

Overall the Fluval filters are the best filters I’ve used and I am very pleased with them. So I will recommend you to give them a try. If you want to get one here is a link to Amazon.

Basking Area

Painted turtles need to bask in order to regulate their body temperature, and to properly assimilate the calcium in their bodies, among other things. But overall it’s important to know that basking is essential to any turtle. And in order to bask, they need a proper place to do so.

This place is called a basking area. A basking area can be any simple platform above the water which is lighted by a heat bulb and a UVB bulb. The only thing about the platform is to be stable, how it will look is up to you. Here are a few examples of basking areas:

As you can see you basically have two options when it comes to basking areas, you can either make one, or buy one. But in both cases what you want is to make sure that the basking area is stable.

If you want to buy a basking platform, here are a few links to Amazon, to some of the basking areas that I’ve used and were very sturdy and good looking:

• Penn-Plax Reptology Turtle Topper
• Zoo Med Turtle Dock
• Penn-Plax Reptology Life Science Floating Turtle-Pier

Heat Light

Painted turtles need to bask at a temperature between 85 and 95 degrees Fahrenheit. So you will need to get a bulb that is able to produce enough heat. The tricky part is that on the bulb it won’t say “this bulb will create temperatures between 80 and 90 degrees”, it will say 50 watt bulb or 75 or 100. So it’s up to you to determine which bulb is good for you. But to make things simpler here is a table that will tell you what temperatures the bulb will create depending on how far from the basking area it’s placed.

So to explain the table, we will use the 50 watt bulb as an example. A 50 watt bulb that is 4 inches above the basking area will create a temperature of 104 degrees fahrenheit. If you place the same bulb 8 inches away from the basking area it will create 81 a temperature of 81 degrees, and if you place it 12 inches away from the basking area the temperature will be 73 degrees fahrenheit.

To measure the temperatures I used an Infrared Thermometer, If you have a few dollars to spare, my suggestion is to get one, this way you will know exactly the temperature in your basking area. When I created the table I measure the temperatures during the spring, but if I were to measure them during the winter, they might be a little lower.

One thing that you should keep in mind is that you shouldn’t place the bulb lower than 4 inches, anything lower than that and your turtle might get burnt.

As for what bulb you should get I will recommend you the Exo Terra Swamp Glo Basking Spot Lamp. Depending on your needs you can choose between the 50,75 and 100 watt options. Those bulbs will last a long time and they will produce enough heat for your turtles. Because I had no problems with them I didn’t feel the need to try too many other options since those bulbs worked great for me and my turtles.

UVB Light

And finally the UVB lamp. The first and most important thing that you have to do when buying a UVB light is to make sure that the box says something like: “This bulb produces UVB wavelength light” or something similar to this. There are some products out there that have UVB in the name but that is the only place you will find the UVB, as they don’t produce any UVB light. 

Now let’s talk about the two different forms in which you can get get the UVB light

Bulb Light

Bulb light, sometimes also referred to as “compact light” is one of the two options. They look like most normal white light bulbs and they are usually easy to find and not very expensive. But they can sometimes cause photo-kerato-conjunctivitis. Photo-kerato-conjunctivitis is basically a problem with the eyes that can occur due to overexposure to UVB light. But besides that, there is no problem with them.

Tube Light

Tube lights are what most people would recommend you to get, and I also agree with that. The biggest advantage that they have over is that they are completely safe, there are no known problems like in the case of the bulb with the photo-kerato-conjunctivitis. They can be a little more expensive than the bulbs but not by any considerable amount. So overall I would call the tubes the better choice.

Don’t Make This Mistake UVB vs UVA

When choosing a light bulb you have to be careful not to confuse UVB light with UVA light.

While UVA light is not bad in any way, it’s not what your turtle needs. So make sure that you don’t confuse them.

As for the recommended products, at the moment I am using the Zilla Slimline Tropical 25 UVB T8 Fluorescent Fixture with the Zilla UVB Fluorescent Bulb, and I am really liking this setup, and so do my turtles. The only thing that you have to be careful of when you get this setup is that you have to make sure that you have a good place where to put it because it won’t be as easy to place as a bulb setup. Other than that I can just say that this tube UVB light is working great. Before moving to a tube, I’ve used the Zoo Med ReptiSun 5.0 UVB Mini Compact Fluorescent bulbs. And here is the Lamp Fixture that I’ve used. The only reason I changed them is that I was moving and I took that opportunity to change things up for my turtles as well.

Painted Turtle Size and Lifespan

On average most painted turtles live between 20 and 25 years and reach sizes between 5 and 6 inches.

In general, females tend to be slightly bigger than males.

How to Determine the Gender of a Painted Turtle

Unfortunately, it’s not that easy to tell the gender of the painted turtle, as most of the distinctive signs only appear when they reach maturity. So if you own a baby painted turtle you could try to figure out the gender, but it’s usually impossible. If your turtle is already one or two years old you can probably determine the gender without too many difficulties.

Before I tell you how to distinguish between male and female painted turtles, let me tell you why you want to know if you have a male or a female.

The biggest reason why you want to know the gender of your turtle are eggs. Female turtles will lay eggs a few times a year even if there is no male around. And as you will see in the next section of the article this will trigger some strange behavior.

The 4 main things that you can use to distinguish a male turtle from a female turtle are:

• The position of the cloaca
• The length of the tail
• The length of the claws
• The size of the shell

The Position of the Cloaca

The cloaca is the multi-functional orifice that turtles use for reproduction purposes, egg-laying, urinating, and defecating.

While the cloaca doesn’t look gross or anything like that, I decided that a simple illustration will be better at explaining its location, than actual pictures.

As you can see in the illustration above, the cloaca of a female painted turtle is located very close to the base of the tail, while at males it’s located closer to the end of the tail.

The Length of the Tail

In the illustration above you might have noticed that the position of the cloaca is not the only difference between the males and the females, and this is not only due to my poor drawing skills. Female painted turtles usually have a shorter and stubbier tail, while the males have a longer and thinner tail.

The Size of the Shell

As I already mentioned a few times in this article another difference between male and female painted turtles is the size. Females usually grow slightly bigger than males.

The Length of the Claws

Another easy-to-spot difference between males and females is the length of the claws. Males usually have considerably longer claws than females. 

Possible Strange Behavior

After a while, you will start to know the normal behavior of your painted turtle. You will get to know how your turtle swims, when and how it will play, and all sorts of different things. And as a result, you will also notice some occasional strange behavior.

When something is wrong with your turtle, with the water in the tank, or with the water, your painted turtle will start acting strange. Here are some of the behaviors that you should look out for, and what the possible causes are.

Franatical Swimming

One of the most common types of strange behaviors is frantically swimming. Painted turtles can do this for quite a few reasons. Some of the most common are:

• A bad diet – when turtles don’t get a proper diet they will try and swim away in search for something to eat. I know that it makes no sense to swim through the glass, but turtles don’t know this so they will try to do this for a while until they will figure out that they won’t get anywhere.
• Stress – if there are a lot of stress factors like excessive noise, or other aggressive pets nearby, like cats or dogs, your turtle will try to swim somewhere safer.
• Pregnancy – when turtles are pregnant they will search for a safe place to hide their eggs.

Escape Attempts

Escape attempts are the result of improper care conditions, the frantically swimming that we just discussed is one type of escape attempt. Escape attempts can take many forms like climbing, hitting the tank, etc.

The possible reasons are the same: bad diet, stress, and pregnancy.

Excessive Digging

If you have a substrate in your tank you might see your turtle trying to dig through it from time to time, this is perfectly normal.

But if you see your turtle trying to dig excessively, then there is a good chance that your turtle is pregnant. When they dig they are searching for a good spot to lay their eggs.

If you want to know how to tell if your turtle is pregnant you should check my detailed guide with pictures that can be found right here: How to Tell if Your Turtle Is Pregnant (with Pictures)

Little to No Energy

If your painted turtle started laying around more than it usually does, and doesn’t spend as much time swimming as it used to, there are 3 possible causes.

One of the causes can be a bad diet, another cause can be a pregnancy, and the third could be that your turtle is sick.

Unfortunately in this case there is no way to know for sure which is the problem, so my suggestion is to go to the vet.

Health Problems

If you think that your turtle has a health problem, or if you see any strange spot on the shell or some kind of discoloration, you should go to the vet. 

Any kind of disease can put the life of your painted turtle in danger, so you don’t want to take any risk. The only proper thing to do is to go to the vet.

Final Thoughts

This article should cover everything that you should know about how to care for a painted turtle. But if you still have questions you can always leave them in the comment section below and I will answer them as soon as possible.

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