Aquarium Plants for Tort Food

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Balboa

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I realized that I may be throwing away good tort food all the time out of my aquariums.

In particular I was interested in Water Lettuce (Pistia stratiotes) and Red Tiger Lotus (Nymphaea zenkeri). These both grow like weeds, and rapidly consume the nutrients in the water, turning hard water soft, ie may likely have alot of calcium in them.

In trying to do a little digging on them, I discovered both have been considered as crops for human consumption, and do indeed have high quantities of calcium, though the bio-availability of it was in question, due to oxylates and phytates. Most of the studies were over my head.

In doing a little digging here on the forums I saw that water lettuce is commonly fed to aquatic turtles, and in a thread Crazy1 stated that they feed torts water lettuce. I found no reference to tiger lotus.

Anybody have any further input? I will probably go ahead and trial small quantities at this point, in the concept that variety is good. I'm not talking about making these high quantity staples at this time.
 

Kristina

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I am in the "waste not want not" camp. I always toss any water lettuce or duckweed that I have to thin out of the turtle ponds to my Redfoots or Box turtles. (I also feed the duckweed to my goldfish, they freaking love it.) I have also seen them nibbling at the water marigolds and sweet rush that I planted in their enclosure.

In my stinkpot aquarium I have water lettuce, duckweed, giant duckweed, redfoot floater, frogbit, filigree and tiger lotus. Stinky doesn't touch them, but all are edible.
 

terryo

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I've seen Pio eat duckweed in his little pond plenty of times. Also my boxies will eat water lettuce and duckweed that I put in their pond. We always go down to the pond where I live and get duckweed and water lettuce. If you get caught putting any of this stuff in the ponds here, you get a fine. They are so invasive. Mine don't get a chance to multiply too much because they eat it.....fast.
 

Az tortoise compound

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I don't know about others(never tried) but to a sulcata water lettuce is a delicacy. I have no experience with Red Tiger Lotus, so not sure.
 

Balboa

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thanks for the input!

they sure do seem to like it, so I'm stoked. Always nice to get another quality diet item going.
 
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