my red eared slider RES eats its dock?

Question

I have 2 RED eared slides. 1 is great it dosent eat the dock, the other is a little fatty or bored or something. it is always trying to eat the dock and i dont know what to do. i feed it more sometimes when i see it eating the dock, but i realy dont want to overfeed them and it doesnt really stop it from going back at it 5 minutes later. I would make a dock made of rocks but my tank is not big enough and i dont want to take away space from them. and right now is not a good time for me to get a new tank (i may be moving cross country soon and cant aford to buy a huge tank then have to leave it behind just to buy another) anyway thats a lot to much info im sure. Help me what do i do?!

ok i know its only been 2 hours and thanks for your advise. I do have a zoo med floating dock and i did go out and buy cuttle bone and fed it to them, (and it was ate fast, and i do feed them the right amount if not more than i should, ive read up on the topic) but its still eating the dock :(. is it to fast to see results? might it take a few days to see resutls?

Answer 1

yup, cuttle bones are where they are at. I know what dock you are talking about, they like to chew that certain kind but that kind also gets algae growing on it fast. Not that algae is bad but there are other good floating docks out there that they wont chew on. I like the acrylic ones that have green traction tape on them.

Answer 2

Well what is your dock made out of? Wood? You can buy them at most pet stores the floating ones. They work pretty good. How much and what are you feeding them? Maybe he feels he needs more nutrients. How deep is the tank? one large rock (that comes out of the water) will work. There are many docks that are sold that Im pretty sure are not edible.

They need a diet of 25% meat 25%pellets/sticks 50% greens. Most young sliders wont eat the greens but you still need to offer it. For meats you can feed them crickets, worms, feeder goldfish etc. and greens they like frozen (then thawed) green beans and other frozen veggies (frozen because they have no additives like the canned veggies do) they also like dandelion greens, romaine lettuce, spinach leaves etc.

Young RES need to be fed everyday as much as they can eat in 15-20 minutes. If there is any food left after 20 minutes remove it.

Good luck with your turtle


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I agree with the first answer also, a turtle bone will work, I use one with my turtles and don't break it and they chomp on it all the time, it sinks after a while but they still take chunks out of it.

Answer 3

I am not a fan of the Zoo Med Floating Log- it looks nice but does not work very well in several ways.

Get a dock they don't eat. Driftwood works better and there are other options you can try instead as well such as the Zoo Med Dock.

Also try http://www.austinsturtlepage.com for a ton of info on this species.

Answer 4

sometimes the zoo med dock eating is caused by a want for calcium. I recommend you get cuttle bone (in the bird section) or turtle bone (in the turtle section) and remove the hard backing, break it into smaller than turtle's head size pieces, and toss a few into the tank. That should hopefully distract him from ingesting the dock!