Ocean Water

Guest · Post by **Guest** » Sat Sep 24, 2005 9:50 am

Hi, is it to any advantage, or can it harm my crabs, to use ocean water in place of Doc Wellfish.How about if I boil the sea water to kill bacteria? Is there anything beneficial in it aside from the salt?I know crabs in their natural environment are exposed to all kinds of filth all the time, but I'm not going to experiment. I didn't see any threads about real sea water (aside from someone trying to sell it) so please advise. Was also wondering: I think I read on Julia Crab's site about seaweed...they eat it in the wild, and around our area lots of fish and dolphins thrive in the water...so if i found some seaweed, I shouldn't risk feeding it to them? I'd love it if I could, they don't seem to like anything fresh I offer.

Guest · Post by **Guest** » Sat Sep 24, 2005 10:12 am

Do you know how polluted your area is? Especially with things like petrochemicals and metals?If it's fairly clean, I know of one person in Australia that feeds hers fresh beach seaweed. Rinse it well first.Boiling the seawater...I'm not sure what benefit it would have. It wouldn't remove anything really harmful for the crabs. Another Australian crabber put real sea water in his tank, and had a mating ritual and eggs laid, so I think they miss the real ocean.

Willow · Post by **Willow** » Sat Sep 24, 2005 10:16 am

I believe that it's beneficial to use fresh ocean water for the crabs. It contains a lot of live organisms, for this reason I don't recommend boiling it. However, try to get it from a nice clean area and use any water you collected within a month, any longer and the beneficial bacteria will have died and polluted the water. Fresh seaweed is great, if you're sure that particular kind isn't toxic. After all, the seaweed used for sushi is just fresh seaweed that's been dried, with nothing added.

KittyCaller · Post by **KittyCaller** » Sat Sep 24, 2005 12:14 pm

Lots of great trace minerals too, I should think. I'd say if you do use it, be cautious.