The Complete Pet Turtle Care Guide

Everything a New Zealand turtle owner needs to know about feeding, health and housing — written by the team who've been supplying and caring for turtles longer than anyone else in the country.

Turtles are one of the longest-lived pets you can own — a healthy Red-Eared Slider or Reeve's Turtle can easily live 20–30 years in captivity — but they're also one of the most misunderstood. Most turtle health problems we see could have been prevented with the right diet, the right water quality, and the right setup from day one.

This guide covers what to feed your turtle and how often, the health issues to watch for and what causes them, and how to house your turtle properly. For the full indoor tank and outdoor pond setup instructions, see our dedicated Turtle Housing Guide.

What to Feed Your Turtle

A turtle's shell, growth rate and general wellbeing come down almost entirely to diet. Get this right and most of the "mystery" health problems owners worry about simply don't happen.

Staple Diet

A quality fish-based turtle food should make up the bulk of every feed. Look for a formulation with added calcium and vitamins — this is what drives strong, healthy shell growth and supports general condition. This is exactly why we developed our own Hot House Turtles Frozen Turtle Food: a fish-based diet formulated with the calcium, minerals and vitamins turtles need, without the guesswork of piecing together a homemade diet.

Live Food

Turtles are enthusiastic hunters and live food is great enrichment as well as nutrition. Good options include:

• Water snails and garden snails (crushed or whole shell-on — just make sure they haven't been exposed to snail bait or pesticide)
• Earthworms
• Water boatmen and mosquito larvae
• Woodlice

Vegetation

As turtles mature they become progressively more omnivorous. Offer puha, lettuce, oxygen weed and other aquatic plants alongside their protein feeds — this mirrors the varied diet they'd forage for in the wild and helps prevent the boredom-driven overfeeding some owners fall into.

How Often to Feed

• Hatchlings: twice per day
• Adults: once per day
• Feed at roughly the same time each day — turtles thrive on routine, and a consistent schedule makes it much easier to spot when something's off.

Feeding Tips From the Team

• Train your turtle to feed in a separate container or laundry sink, matched to your tank's water temperature. Leave it there for about an hour — most defecation happens in the feeding container rather than your main tank, keeping your display water cleaner for longer.
• If you keep more than one turtle, feed with rubber-tipped reptile feeding tweezers. They let you gauge exactly how much each turtle is getting, protect your fingers from nips, and won't damage your turtle's mouth or face if it strikes at the wrong moment.

Turtle Health: Common Problems & Causes

Most turtle health issues trace back to one of three things: water quality, temperature, or diet. Below are the problems we're asked about most often.

Soft Shell

Cause: Usually a Vitamin D deficiency from inadequate UVB lighting, or insufficient calcium in the diet.
What to do: Check your UVB bulb is the correct spec for your tank size and hasn't exceeded its recommended replacement schedule (UVB output drops off long before the bulb stops producing visible light), and make sure your food includes proper calcium supplementation.

Pneumonia / Respiratory Infection

Cause: Turtles chill easily, and a sustained cold snap is the most common trigger. Watch for lethargy, floating unevenly, gasping, or discharge from the nose or mouth.
What to do: Cover tanks overnight through winter, especially if the tank sits in a cold part of the house, and keep water temperature stable. A turtle showing breathing symptoms should see a reptile-experienced vet promptly.

Salmonella

Turtles are natural carriers of salmonella — this isn't a sign of a poorly-kept turtle, it's completely normal. It does mean hygiene matters:

• Wash your hands thoroughly after handling your turtle or cleaning its tank
• Take extra hygiene precautions in households with young children, pregnant people, or anyone immunocompromised
• Never clean turtle tanks or equipment in the kitchen sink

Bacterial Shell Infection (White Blotches)

Cause: Usually humidity inside the tank preventing the shell from drying properly during basking.
What to do: If your tank has a glass or mesh lid, open the section above the basking area to cut humidity there. Once your turtle can dry off properly and regularly, the infection stops spreading — though the white blotches won't disappear until the affected scutes are shed, which can take two to three shedding cycles (roughly 2–3 years). A dedicated 60W basking lamp — on in the morning, off at night — helps dry the shell fully and speeds this along.

Ammonia Poisoning

Arguably the single biggest cause of preventable turtle deaths. Turtle waste produces ammonia fast, water can look completely clean while ammonia levels are dangerously high, and a turtle can die within hours of exposure. Regular water changes and a quality filtration system are not optional extras — see our Housing Guide for a full water quality routine.

When to See a Vet

Book a check-up with a reptile-experienced vet if you notice: refusal to eat for more than a few days outside the normal pre-hibernation slowdown, swelling around the eyes or ears, discharge, unusual buoyancy, or visible shell damage beyond surface blotching.

Housing Your Turtle

Feeding and health both depend on getting the environment right first — tank size, water depth, temperature, filtration, basking and lighting all interact, and getting one wrong tends to cause problems in the others. Because there's a lot to get right, and indoor and outdoor setups are genuinely different projects, we've given housing its own dedicated guide.

Frequently Asked Questions

Have a question we haven't covered? Contact the Hot House Turtles team — New Zealand's turtle specialists.