Red eared sliders are wonderful pets to have. However, the health and growth of your beloved pet depend on the food you feed them. So, should you feed them celery or refrain from it?
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Red eared sliders are wonderful pets to have. However, the health and growth of your beloved pet depend on the food you feed them. So, should you feed them celery or refrain from it?
Well, you can feed them celery if they like it. But feeding it to them every day might not be a good idea.
Therefore, if you have stocked up on celery for your pet slider, you need to know a couple of things about feeding it to them. And here’s all the information you need in this department.
Can Red Eared Sliders Eat Celery?
Red eared sliders can have celery. However, they should not have too much celery because that might lead to digestive issues. Celery has fiber that helps turtles to pass stool easily. But due to that same reason, excess celery can make them constipated. Also, leaving uneaten celery in the tank can make it stink up. If you want to give them celery, mix it with other food, and don’t overdo it. Try to feed the leaves more than the stalk. Lastly, check to see if you are buying fresh celery for them each time.
Can Red Eared Sliders Have Celery?
Celery will not harm the red eared sliders if you cut it up into small pieces to feed them. The turtle might even love it. However, turtles do not get any nutrients, minerals, or vitamins they need from the celery.
Moreover, celery is low in vitamin A, calcium, fiber, and the like. It mostly has water and contains hardly any nutritional value. When your slider starts filling its appetite with celery, they are not hungry for anything else. But they will need other essential food for them to get proper nutrition.
In addition, when you feed the turtles excess celery, its low fiber content may constipate the turtle. After all, there is a lack of fiber to get the poop pushed out through the digestive tract.
Can Red Eared Sliders Digest Celery?
Dietary fiber is a crucial part of your pet slider’s diet because it helps to lower their risks for several health issues like soft shell. It also improves their digestion. But red eared sliders naturally don’t eat loads of fiber. So, they might have trouble processing fiber-rich food like celery.
Though turtles can process even foods that are a bit heavy for them to properly digest, their bodies work harder to break down those things. It can stress out the digestive system of the turtle. It is also hard on their kidneys and liver when the food feels indigestible or when excess waste is produced to get rid of the food.
Your red eared slider cannot digest all the fiber present in the celery. However, they can get some health benefits from its fiber.
How to Give Celery to a Red Eared Slider
Ideally, you feed celery to your slider in smaller amounts as they can digest it at a slower pace. But remember never to add really large portions or let them an entire stalk at one go. Celery sticks are messy and might lead to water quality problems when excess is offered at once. If you don’t want this issue, limit how much celery your turtle has.
When you feed celery to your slider, stick to the leaves rather than the stalks. They find it easier to digest the leaves. The leaves even have more potassium and calcium with less water. So, your turtle will not get extra full from having celery leaves.
Remember that if you add celery to the turtle tank as a part of their treatment, you should remove all uneaten stalks afterward. If those keep lying there, they will break down and affect the water quality. Clear out all the uneaten celery stalks right on time.
What is The Right Amount of Celery For Red Eared Sliders?
If your turtle has the celery stalk, you must limit its intake. As outlined before, celery mostly has water and not too much nutrition. Ideally, you can feed celery to your slider once or twice monthly as a snack. Also, get it mixed with their other food to satisfy their nutritional needs.
On the other hand, you can feed them the leaves with each meal if you want. Now, feeding the slider the celery stick depends on the turtle’s size and age. Typically, get them one-half of the stick and note how they react to it. Not every red eared slider likes eating celery!
You can have two sliders in the tank. One can love celery, while the other is not so much into it.
Side Effects of Giving Celery to Red Eared Sliders
Though celery has a bit of nutritional value, it can also have a host of side effects. And those side effects get stronger when your turtle has too much celery in one go.
In any case, here are the top three risks of feeding celery to a red eared slider:
Water Pollution
The chief problem with feeding loads of celery to turtles is that their digestive system breaks down and makes a messy waste. It leads to extra algae and debris building up in the tank, which can lead to dirty water. This can be a huge issue in your hands when you constantly need to clean the tank. All that mess can be difficult or risky to filter out completely.
Nutritional Content
Another issue with feeding celery to your slider is that those green stalks might lose all the nutritional value due to processing. Even then, the turtles can benefit from all the fiber that lets them easily digest the food. It can mean a waste of loads of valuable nutrients. So, you will have to include something else in the diet to ensure they get all the minerals and vitamins they need.
Digestive Issues
Celery offers the kind of fiber that aids digestion in turtles, particularly when you mix it with other foods and offer moderation. But too much celery can cause digestive disorders and other problems. It starts with celery not being properly processed by the turtle’s system. So, if you see that your turtle has digestive problems from celery, stop giving it to them immediately.
As you can understand from the side effects mentioned above, most risks can be avoided by controlling how much you feed them every time. Also, if you cut up the celery into really small pieces, the turtles will have no problem eating them. And you can always stop if they get health issues from celery.
How to Buy Fresh Celery For a Turtle
It would help to consider a couple of things when buying celery for your turtle. First, get only fresh celery and check whether the stalks are nice and tough. It would be best to choose celery with firmer stalks because they are more nutritious than limp ones.
Also, the last thing you want is to feed expired and limp celery to your red eared sliders. When the celery starts expiring, harmful bacteria start building up on it. And that can never be good for your turtle.
Check the stalks and leaves to make sure they are all fresh. Smell the celery to check if it has that herby and clean fragrance.
Hopefully, you now have all the details you need about feeding celery to your turtle. The key is giving them celery in moderation – like an occasional treat. If you don’t overdo it, your red eared slider should have no problem with it.
