What Vegetables Can Red Eared Sliders Eat? (Including List)

Red Eared Slider turtles love to eat, usually they will eat everything that you put in front of them, and this includes vegetables. But just because they can eat them, it doesn’t mean that every vegetable is good for them. To find out which vegetables Red Eared Slider turtles can eat, I decided to do some research. Here is what I found out.

The best vegetables to feed your Red Eared Slider are: dark leafy greens like romaine lettuce, green beans,spinach,  kale, carrots, and bell peppers. But overall most vegetables will be a good addition to your turtle’s diet. The only vegetables that you should avoid are the ones with a high amount of phosphorus.

Overall almost every vegetable will benefit your Red Eared Slider turtle, except those with little to no nutritional value, like iceberg salad, and mushrooms. And vegetables with a high amount of phosphorus, which will do more harm than good. Now let’s take a closer look at those vegetables.

Vegetables That Don’t Benefit Red Eared Slider Turtles

There are a few vegetables out there that contain little to no nutritional value for Red Eared Slider turtles. In general vegetables are regarded as great food sources that can help any person or animal maintain good health, but turtles don’t benefit in the same way from vegetables as we do. Some of the vitamins and nutrients from vegetables that help people remain healthy have little to no beneficial effect for turtles.

Some of those vegetables are: iceberg salad, cucumbers, eggplants, and mushrooms. There are other vegetables that do little to no good for the health of the turtle, but I only listed a few of them because this way it will be easy to remember, and they are also the vegetables that you are very likely to encounter at most stores.

While those vegetables don’t actually harm Red Eared Slider turtles, the only thing they do is to fill their stomachs, but they don’t provide too much nutritional value. So it would be better to just give your turtle something else instead. For example instead of giving your Red Eared Slider turtle iceberg salad, you could give it a greenleaf salad which contains a lot of beneficial nutrients, and it’s actually loved by most turtles.

If in the past you used to feed your Red Eared Slider turtle some of those less nutritional vegetables, there is no problem, as I said they won’t harm your turtle. But from now on you should give them some better vegetables.

So let’s move to the other types of vegetables that aren’t good for Red Eared Slider turtles, those with a high amount of phosphorus.

Vegetables That Can Harm Your Red Eared Slider Turtle

Almost all vegetables contain calcium and phosphorus. And as a result most of them have a calcium to phosphorus ratio. So let’s take a look at what calcium does for Red Eared Slider turtles, what phosphorus does for them and what is a good calcium to phosphorus ratio.

Calcium is essential for every animal in this world that has bones. And since the shell of a turtle is made out of bones, calcium is even more important for turtles than for any other animal. Vegetables are one of the main sources of calcium that a Red Eared Slider turtle has, so making sure that you feed them vegetables with high amounts of calcium is important.

For humans phosphorus is a very important mineral that helps filtering waste, repairing tissue and cells, etc. But for turtles phosphorus is not that great. Phosphorus is what gives turtle shells a little flexibility, which is great because this little extra flexibility makes them more resistant to bites and other types of impact. But too much phosphorus can also make the shell too soft, and as a result much weaker when it comes to defending the turtle from predators.

In short, we can say that calcium is great for turtles and phosphorus is not so great for turtles in high quantities.

Most vegetables have a calcium to phosphorus ratio, this ratio can be 1:1, 2:1, 5:1, 1:2, etc.

A 1:1 ratio means that the amount of calcium is equal, or almost equal to the amount of phosphorus. So a vegetable with this ratio is not that great for turtles, but it’s not harmful either. But if possible such a vegetable should be avoided.

A 1:2 calcium to phosphorus ratio is really bad, there are not many vegetables with this ratio, so don’t worry too much about them. Just remember that if a vegetable has more potassium than calcium you should keep it away from your turtle.

A 2:1 ratio is great, and this is what you should be aiming for, if the ratio goes higher it’s ok, but ideally this is the ratio that you are looking for.

Here is a list of some of the most common vegetables and their Calcium to Phosphorus ratio:

With the help of this table you should be able to get a general idea of what vegetables you should feed your Red Eared Slider turtle. I personally like to feed my Red Eared Slider turtle greenleaf and redleaf salad, they are not too expensive and she seems to like it. And when I’m cooking something with vegetables I usually cut a couple of smaller pieces and feed them to my turtle, just to mix things up a little.

Another quick thing that I want to cover in this article is what to do if your Red Eared Slider turtle doesn’t eat the vegetables. This can happen a lot, especially if they are babies, juveniles or if they are just not used to eating them.

What to Do If Your Red Eared Slider Turtle Doesn’t Eat Vegetables

The first thing that you have to do is to determine the cause. And there are two possibilities.

The first possibility is that your turtle is too young. It’s not uncommon for baby and juvenile Red Eared Slider turtles to not eat vegetables. When they are at those life stages they are growing a lot faster than adult Red Eared Slider turtles, and to grow this fast they need a lot of protein that they get from meat. So eating vegetables or anything else won’t do them any good. If your Red Eared Slider turtle is you then it’s perfectly normal that it won’t eat vegetables. Just wait until it reaches maturity, then you can try again to feed it vegetables.

If you are not sure how old your turtle is, then read this article: How Long do Turtles Live?, there you will find a few methods that will help you approximate the age of your turtle.

The second possibility is that you got your turtle used to eating only meat, pellets, and similar things, and now it doesn’t want to eat anything else. But fortunately this is a common problem that has a simple situation. You just have to stop feeding your turtle so much meat and pellets, and start giving it vegetables as well. Start by reducing the amount of food that you give it and replacing it with vegetables. If it still doesn’t eat, replace more of its food with vegetables. 

Do this until it starts eating the vegetables. Don’t worry about starving your turtle, in the wild they are used to going entire months without food, and you are not taking all the food away, you are still giving it the possibility to eat a lot of food. The only reason it doesn’t eat is because it’s used to other types of food, that are not as healthy, but a lot more tasty.

After a couple weeks or a month of using this method, your Red Eared Slider turtle will start eating vegetables soon enough, and in the end it will also start to enjoy some of them.

Related Questions

Can turtles eat fruits? Yes turtles can and should eat fruits. Fruits provide a lot of important vitamins and nutrients that keep turtles healthy.

What is the best food for turtles? There is nothing out there that can be named the best food. Instead the best thing that you can feed your turtle is a balanced diet, that contains pellets, fruits, vegetables and meat.

Can turtles eat pasta? Turtles can eat them, but they shouldn’t. Pasta contains little to no nutritional value for turtles, and they can cause digestive problems. So keep pasta away from your turtles.

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