Hermit Crab Salt Products

Questions about food and water.
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ladybug15057
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Re: [ Debate ] Hermit Crab Salt Products

Post by ladybug15057 »

Normally when one wants to discuss a topic, a single name is not selected for the discussion or quoted as though they made certain claims. (do you have links to the quotes with my name as making certain claims?) Even in the Opposing Views discussion forum you refer to has a few names within it that the poster wanted to run his thoughts by for input.
The discussion I believe you are meaning (so we ALL are on the same page) is Table Salts Might Be Safe You are correct in it not being replied to in almost a year. But please read the WHOLE thread, are you able/ready to do the experimenting needed to see if or what the results of using table salt would have if any on hermies? This in itself would need to be a very controlled setting as mentioned within the thread link above. And as LolaGranola also stated “I think you're right, it's something that needs to be looked at further. I do worry about our drive-by crabbers (mostly young). Their gut is to take the info and leave.” No offense, but this happens here as well with some members. Even though they may post a question to the forums here they do not even bother to read the replies directed to them but create another post instead either due to not knowing how to get back to their original post or attempting to bypass the reply they received in hopes of getting the reply they ‘want’.
Through some ‘discussions’ on a couple of topics it has come back in the past to slap certain crabbers. “I read on this site to xyz and I did and my crabs began dying one by one and within 2 weeks all were dead”. So use caution please for those “drive by crabbers” and they are NOT all young either!
And Wai please also remember as LolaGranola said “I think we get into the realm of not all table salt being created equal.” This can vary from state to state depending on where the manufacturer got their salt from as well if not more so from country to country. Some laws are stricter than others in different countries as well as within the same country. (Good example here is the state of California in U.S. is MUCH stricter on the labeling of products than the rest of the U.S.)
To compare some things between humans (mammal) and hermies (cold blooded) maybe ok, but quite a few times it is a little better to use fish, reptiles, birds etc. other cold blooded creatures. And this is not to say the difference in the digestive track between mammals and reptiles. (hermies are known to be scavengers and in the wild eat things that would kill other mammals/humans)
Loads one should consider, and why there is quite a bit of experimenting done too even after research journals/documentations are found. Nearly impossible to recreate a creatures habitat in the wild within a glass enclosure.
ZooMed is liquid form, please read the link about ZooMed I provided above. There is a ppt difference too. (Not a scientist here but it is really a considerable difference to one who understands simple math) And do they use the ingredients for ocean/sea water or freshwater salt to make the ZooMed part 2?
Now it would be soooooooooo much cheaper and convenient to use table salt for many, especially zoo’s and pet stores. Wonder why they don’t?? Certainly with all the expensive equipment and laboratories they have there is a reason they use the triple expensive ocean/sea salts made for salt water tanks as opposed to the cheap table salt? Just curious as why they don’t?
And if one waits for ‘scientists’ well, very little money is given to facilities to do any research on what is considered a scavenging pest. A few years ago there was one who well wanted ‘scientific’ explanations/facts and began stating such on a forum. All it did was make those who did research, experiment, or had successful experience in keeping hermies quit posting and join other groups.
One should remember too many times it takes months of research to hit the tip of something. To post as such for another to come by and take the info as their own without crediting the original ‘finder’.
Does anybody realize that even Crustacean scientist/biologist can learn from crabbers who keep hermies in captivity?
Little story:
The member who shared with me about the fresh water salts, was from Texas and she and a colleague were setting up a display for a shipment of Robber Crabs they were due in. It is my understanding this was one of the first attempts here in the U.S. There was info about Robber Crabs in the wild, but very limited information about keeping them in captivity successfully. So to learn about keeping our land hermies in captivity she joined Crab Street Journal. By doing this she had purchased a few land hermies and set up their crabitat. In her words, this would give her a little experience to keeping land hermies that may help with the keeping of robber crabs.
The Zoomed part 2 stuff is a yellow liquid ("yellow dye added" so you can tell the water bowls apart)
No, not quite read the link/thread on CSJ it is so the employees can tell the difference due to manufacturing poisons as well they are suppose to be able tell them apart.

P.S. O/T
To make something a little easier to find as opposed to needing to read the who thread, why not start another reply instead of an edit in a post where one needs to read the whole thing to try to figure out what has been edited?
Marie (aka ladybug15057)

If you are contacted privately (via pm or e-mail) and enticed to join another forum, please contact a Crab Crew member. This is an unethical practice.
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Wai
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Re: [ Debate ] Hermit Crab Salt Products

Post by Wai »

ladybug15057 wrote:I do worry about our drive-by crabbers (mostly young). Their gut is to take the info and leave.” No offense, but this happens here as well with some members. Even though they may post a question to the forums here they do not even bother to read the replies directed to them but create another post instead either due to not knowing how to get back to their original post or attempting to bypass the reply they received in hopes of getting the reply they ‘want’.
ladybug15057 wrote:A few years ago there was one who well wanted ‘scientific’ explanations/facts and began stating such on a forum. All it did was make those who did research, experiment, or had successful experience in keeping hermies quit posting and join other groups.
I agree with you, Marie. I was pondering whether to make this thread at the time and hoped for more discussion, but it seems that only us three are posting. Now I'm actually a bit worried that there might be some youngsters who go replacing their HBH/ZooMed salt with table salt.
ladybug15057 wrote:But please read the WHOLE thread, are you able/ready to do the experimenting needed to see if or what the results of using table salt would have if any on hermies?
Yes, I read the whole thread. As I mentioned earlier, my contention for this debate was not to consider table salt as an alternative to sea salt. I was just trying to explain why sodium chloride was not deadly to hermit crabs. If someone asked us why table salt shouldn't be offerred to hermit crabs, we need to be able to give them a logical step-by-step explanation.

Also, as indicated by the subject of this debate, the focus is hermit crab salt products. If I were to perform a controlled experiment, it would be between our selection of "approved" sea salts and those by ZooMed, HBH, Happy Hermits etc., like the one performed in that article we mentioned earlier.

By the way, when I say "sodium chloride", I am referring to the molecule alone, rather than general table salt mixtures. Table salt products are too often compounded with other substances not found in sea salt, so "sodium chloride" should never be used to collectively refer to table salts.
Wai
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