Giving hermit crabs coconut

Post by **Wai** » 28 May 2005, 19:21

I know hermit crabs love fresh coconut, but how should I give it to them? I want to give both the flesh and milk, but the hermit crabs will drag the food and get the milk all over the tank, making the sand all sticky. Then I'd have to clean the whole tank. What should I do?

Julia_Crab · Post by **Julia_Crab** » 29 May 2005, 00:38

Yeah, well, crabs are messy eaters.

It's vital to their health that they get coconut, fresh being best. I feel coconut is one of the big three items that should be the foundation pillars of their diet.

I serve coconut in many different ways. The first way is the kibble. Chopping it up in a food processor with other foods they like, so it's in small, manageable pieces prevents a lot of the dragging about of food, but doesn't stop it entirely.

You can put a chunk in a shallow dish, but if the crabs want to drag it around they will. If the coconut offered this way is dry and not soaked with coconut water, then it's not a problem. My crabs drag coconut everywhere. Crabs are messy. A little coconut dragged across the sand isn't going to hurt anything. EE, now, might be a different matter entirely. One of the reasons I don't use coconut fiber substrate is because the crabs like to put food on it, and it gets moldy with little provocation.

If you put a chunk in, and your crabs are competitive for food, you may want to break it up into smaller chunks so they can have access to more than one chunk at a time. I've seen one of my crabs who loves coconut as much as he loves his shell try to fight off a crab twice his size when she came for his coconut chunk. It's like crab catnip.

When I've served the coconut water to the crabs, I've done it in a dish with sides at least a half inch deep. I don't fill it all the way, leaving the level a little bit below the dish lip, and set it all the way into the sand so they only have to lean down to drink it, rather than climb into the dish. They LOVE fresh coconut water. I've noticed that the water from new coconuts is preferred to the water from mature coconuts, but they prefer the flesh of the mature coconut to the flesh of the new one.

Your crabs should have access to coconut several times a week at least, IMO.

Post by **Wai** » 29 May 2005, 00:43

Yay! I'm online at the same time as someone else!

So should I offer the flesh in the tank, but offer the milk outside the tank? I could give them the milk at bath time, so if they get all sticky I can wash it off. That way they can have access to both flesh and water.

bennynlewie · Post by **bennynlewie** » 03 Jun 2005, 00:57

or what u can do is put the coconut flesh in with their original food in the food dish and put a new lil dish in there for milk just like water

rcmommy · Post by **rcmommy** » 04 Jun 2005, 06:16

Is this why they like to pick at the coconut huts? I have one of these and my new crabs are the only ones I've ever seen try to "eat" to pick at the inside of the shell.

Julia_Crab · Post by **Julia_Crab** » 04 Jun 2005, 07:56

If your crabs are picking at coconut huts that are dried already, they're looking for cellulose. They need cellulose to convert to chitin in molting.

You can provide them with dried leaves (free of pesticdes of course) from oak or sycamore, and twigs as well. Other types of wood, such as cork bark, is good for them too.

Julia_Crab · Post by **Julia_Crab** » 04 Jun 2005, 09:17

Another good source of cellulose is a corn cob after you've eaten the corn.

Always a crab favorite in my tank.