AboutYexalen Expertise I am experienced with the care, lighting, heating, breeding, sexing, species identification, and general keeping of mostly aquatic turtles. I also have experience with tortoises and land turtles and can certainly research any question that I do not know the answer. I can not answer medical related questions as I am not veterinarian certified. I prefer not to answer questions on animals that you or somebody else has taken out of their natural environment unless the animal was in danger, ill, or injured.
Experience I have owned six aquatic turtles and have been researching turtles for several years. I have been on several question and answer sites under this category. I also have started up a web site focused on reptile care with a portion of it for turtles.
Education/Credentials I have been around turtles sense a very young age and always found them fascinating and because of that it has lead me to researching day after day, reading book after book, and finding endless amounts of web sites with information.
Question My family and I are going on a vacation for a week and ahalf. We have two turtles that we assume are two years because thats how long we had them. They were babies when we got them. We want to leave the turtles home because we cannot find a turtlesitter. The question is how long can a turtle go without food. My mom feeds them once a day with floating food sticks from ReptoMin.
Answer Hello Angelica, if you can try to find a sitter, that will help a lot.
For lighting you will not want to keep lights on 24/7 and you dont want to leave them in the dark. If you don't have one already then get a timer for the plug in.
Get a thermostat to control how hot it gets in there, so the heaters dont get too high.
They can not go that long with out food. At least they wont be healthy when you get back. However there may be an option.
If you get an Automatic Fish Feeder such as this one sold at PetCo
There are least expensive ones as well. Just be sure that the food pellets will fit through the opening as some of the cheaper ones are built for fish FLAKES only.
