What type of turtle is this and what should I feed it?

Question

Could you help me to identity this turtle?

And what should I feed it?

It seems to be a turtle that lives in water.

Here are 2 pictures of the side of its head.

A picture of its back

And a picture of its belly

Answer 1

This is surely a Yellow-Bellied Slider (I will call them YBS further). Look at this Wikipedia site to start your research :)

If they are younger, they have black dots at the belly, later all of them disappear and only two near the front will stay permanent.

At the head you can note the downward width yellow stripe behind the eye. Other breeds have horizontal stripes instead, or other colors.

In general there are three foods, aquatic turtle's diets base onto: carrots, sepia and common freshwater shrimp (dried or frozen). You should avoid pellets, because they very often do not match the needs of the turtles.

The food should be offered in the water, because the turtles cannot swallow food provided in an dry environment. They would try to pull it into the water.

The carrot provides vitamin A, which is important for the molting (getting rid of the most top shell parts, which the turtle growth too big for), and prevents shell necrosis, pneumonia and ear abscess (all illnesses, turtles are sadly famous for). YBS have a high need of vitamin A, so you can grate or slice the carrot and feed the turtle around one head-size per day.

The sepia provides calcium, very important for shell growth. You can buy sepia often for birds in the pet store. Letting the block swim onto the water surface is perfectly fine.

The shrimps will provide pre-forms of vitamin D and the turtle is able to process them into vitamin D with help of basking (sun-bath) in the real Sun (without glass in between) or under a special basking light bulb which must provide appropriate UV light. (Here are many answered questions about the light, use the search function for it :) )

You can interchange the carrots with salads and wild herbs like dandelion (mine adores dandelion very much). Also, you can interchange the shrimp with bloodworm, mosquito larvae and other frozen food you would get for petfish.

Please be aware, that this turtles will not show signs to have enough food. They are hungry all the time and would eat and eat and eat. Vegetables and greens they can have accessible all the time, floating on the surface. But shrimp and other food-animals, they should get only the volume of the turtles head once per day. If they get more, they would grow too fast and the shell would become weak. In normal growth the lines between the scales of the belly should be not wider than 0.5 cm.

Answer 2

It will feed itself if loose. Otherwise an adult "YBS" is going to need a few hundred gallon pond outside or a large aquarium with some feature that allows the turtle to leave the water and sit in the correct light. They like live bugs and worms and fruit and vegetables. He probably knows better what he eats than the internet so offer a varietyof foods. I have had a few wander into my backyard pond . I don't know what they ate . In the autumn they disappeared. I think a tortoise ( dry land ) makes a better pet, simpler care.