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November 2008:
"Flower Paradise" |
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| If you are a member of Hermit Crab Paradise, visit the link above to enter the competition. If not, please register first. |
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Survey #023:
What is your second storey made of? |
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| If you are a member of Hermit Crab Paradise, visit the link above to vote. If not, please register first. |
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| Say NO to Crabinacup sold at Walmart! Such humiliation and animal cruelty against hermit crabs must not be tolerated. |
| Say NO to the painted shells sold in many pet stores! Hermit crabs are not toys, nor are their shells. |
| You can help our protest by signing the petitions and joining many other crabbers in the battle for the respect of hermit crabs. |
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| If Hermit Crab Paradise has proven helpful to you, please link back to us! You may use the 90×90 icon above if you wish, but please upload it to your own server. We appreciate your support! |
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"Hermit Crab Food" Alone is Not Sufficient |
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| Would you spend the rest of your life eating only plain white bread? Of course you wouldn't, yet some people have been restricting their hermit crabs to plain "hermit crab food" for months. Sounds scary? Like humans, hermit crabs must have a diet consisting of a wide variety of foods to obtain essential vitamins and minerals. If a hermit crab is not fed enough nutrients, it is more likely to be susceptible to illness, moulting difficulties and deformities. |
| Many hermit crab owners have observed that their hermit crabs, particularly Ecuadorian hermit crabs (C. compressus), prefer to eat something different for each meal. If fed the same dish everyday, the hermit crabs may become reluctant to eat altogether, further reducing their intake of nutrients. Hermit crabs are omnivores; they eat both meat and vegetables. In the wild, hermit crabs are scavengers; you either eat what you get or go hungry. They'll eat anything from fallen fruit to dead fish lying on the beach. A protein-deficient hermit crab will not be able to grow much bigger after than a moult and may even become even smaller while those who were not fed much calcium will have more difficulty hardening their exoskeleton after a moult. |
| Provide organic food when possible, otherwise the food may be contaminated with pesticides or other harmful chemicals to hermit crabs. If you intend to cook and prepare food for your hermit crabs yourself, always use dechlorinated water and sea salt, not table salt or iodised salt. |
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| A diet rich in calcium (Ca), copper (Cu) and zinc (Zn) are necessary for more successful moults. However, if copper is present in the form of copper sulfate (CuSO4), it will be toxic to hermit crabs, so avoid foods containing such a compound. Some leafy green vegetables contain enzymes (proteins that function as biological catalysts to increase the rate of a chemical reaction) called oxalates that can bind with calcium to prevent its absorption. Such enzymes will denature in high temperatures, so cook the vegetables in dechlorinated water before serving. |
| Below is a list of foods rich in these three elements submitted by Kerie, founder of the Epicurean Hermit. |
Calcium:
Cereals, especially wheat and rye; chickpeas and other legumes such as beans; fish; liver; meat; most nuts (especially brazil and cashew nuts, pecans and peanuts); oysters; peaches; raisins; seeds (especially poppy and sunflower); cuttlebone; egg shells. |
Copper:
Broccoli; canned salmon with bones; dried beans and peas; greens; sardines. |
Zinc:
Corn; cucumber; egg yolk; haddock; lamb; legumes; lentils; lettuce; nuts; olive oil; peas; pork chops; sardines; spinach; tuna; whole grains. |
| Sea vegetable, macroalgaes (seaweed) and microalgaes (such as spirulina) are also rich in all these elements, so don't forget to include them in your hermit crab's diet. Have a look in the fish section of pet stores for these. |
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| Hermit crabs are not mammals and are not exposed to milk in the wild, but does that mean that they cannot synthesise the enzyme lactase to break down the lactose from milk? Several hermit crab owners, including Kerie, have been able to prove that dairy products are not lethal to hermit crabs. Below is a short extract from Kerie's experiment that she posted on our Forums. |
"About February 2005, I started with low-lactose cheese, organic sharp cheddar. It was a massive hit. I noted several crabs, especially cavipes and rugosus, enjoying the cheese I had put in their food dish. After that trial, I attempted live-culture yogurt, as the bacteria included in the live-culture yogurts digest the little lactose remaining in the food for the eater, rather than depending on the consumer's own enzymes to break it down for them. The yogurt, also, was extremely popular.
"For several months, I communicated with other crabbers who were open to the idea of doing feeding trials and shared my results, while still feeding the occasional treat of cheese or yogurt. Other people reproduced my results, with the same end: i.e., no deaths whether immediate or delayed, no bad molts, and no unusual behavior.
"A member of my food group (kuplakrabs) let it be known a few months after I'd announced my results that she had been giving her crabs whole milk for several months. She had had absolutely no unexplained deaths, with the exception of one brevimanus that never ate and died of PPS. I decided to attempt a whole milk trial myself. The milk was massively popular, with a line of crabs waiting for their turn to have a drink outside the dish. I still have had no deaths in the crabs that I observed drinking the whole milk. It has been nearly a year since I began feeding trials of dairy products, and I am confident enough in my results to state that dairy is NOT lethal to crabs. They enjoy it immensely."
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| Just to be safe, do not offer dairy products too frequently; rather, offer them as treats. |
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