What do you feed your crabs?

Guest · Post by **Guest** » Mon Aug 18, 2008 3:15 pm

I just emailed her to see what she recommends as a good diet for the little guys. There is so much to pick from hehe. I'm rather indecisive as it is so with the large selection it makes it hard to decide what to pick.

Guest · Post by **Guest** » Mon Aug 18, 2008 6:28 pm

Does your local supermarket have a seafood counter? I know you don't eat meat but I've been to the seafood counter and gotten just enough shrimp to register on the scale (between 3 and 5 usually). You can steam them pretty quickly in a glass bowl and just throw the whole thing in there.

This will really help satisfy their need for protein, chitin, and calcium and they will have a great time picking at it.

Guest · Post by **Guest** » Mon Aug 18, 2008 6:44 pm

that is a good idea. Only issue I have right now is I broke the only glass topped cooking pot we have last night :S.

Guest · Post by **Guest** » Mon Aug 18, 2008 6:46 pm

What about a ceramic coffee mug? I've steamed things in those before too, works great, especially for small jobs.

Guest · Post by **Guest** » Mon Aug 18, 2008 6:55 pm

interesting idea, I might just stick to buying pre-dehydrated, will work it out though.

Guest · Post by **Guest** » Tue Aug 19, 2008 8:12 am

i am very new to this whole crab thing, admittedly, but i think i have gotten the basics on the food thing down...my challenge at the moment is ascertaining what they like best, and for that, i give them tiny bits of many different things and try to tell if they have eaten any...

right now it is a slow going process because they are, i think, suffering from PPS, and so not very energetic or hungry, it seems....

anyway, here is what i am doing now...i have taken an organic fruit and nut granola mix comprised of rolled oats, honey, sunflower seeds, almonds, walnuts, dried cranberry and raisins and added shaved cuttlebone and organic wheat germ to it, grinding it down into manageable-sized lil chunks...i also give a few tiny freeze dried shrimp, some dried chunks of mango and papaya, plus a small dollop of honey...i give this combination every day, serving the honey in a separate tiny shell dish to keep it from seeping into the other foods....

then i supplement with different fresh fruit/veggie/harvestables and cooked meat selections...

for instance, night before last i supplemented my daily staples with fresh banana, organic alfalfa sprouts, and a piece of cut up, unseasoned, boiled (in salt water) chicken

last night, i gave a bit of fresh out of the shell coconut swimming in a bit of coconut milk, some dried sea grass harvested on the beach and rehydrated in salt water, some raw carrot bits, a hibiscus petal and stamen, some cherry leaf, and a tiny bit of steamed clam harvested in the shallows at the beach...

so far, they seem to be nibbling at my granola staple, love the carrots and the alfalfa sprouts, and are taking in a bit of honey...they also made a pretty sizable dent in the coconut and the milk is gone, so they went well for that....

my goal is to ascertain their favorites, which i can then keep around as staples and am working on a system that would allow me to prepare large amounts of these staples and then package them into small amounts (say enough for a weeks supply)...then all i will have to do is pull a few small packages of a variety of things out for the week and toss in a lil fresh food out of what we are eating around here to give it some variety day to day...

this is requiring that i learn what sorts of things can be successfully frozen, what can be dried and what can't and would always be a perishable, requiring it be served fresh...

anyway, that is what i am doing at the moment...i wish i could say that it's been a rousing success so far, but just yet it's a little hard to tell, given the PPS...

comments and suggestions are welcome and i hope i gave some help to others...

Guest · Post by **Guest** » Tue Aug 19, 2008 9:21 am

Sounds great. The only thing I would say is that you don't need to grind it up into tiny pieces. Healthy crabs are built to dissassemble the foods they are eating so you're all good there!

blaze88 · Post by **blaze88** » Tue Aug 19, 2008 10:25 am

Pretty much any crab you buy is going to have PPS, unless you get them from the crabbage patch. Sounds like you are doing well.

I am veg and my protein sources are just my kibbles I make, broccoli, snap peas, spinach, shimp, bloodworms and plankton. Hermits really need lean animal protein though, maybe just go to your seafood counter, or buy a bag of frozen or freeze dried shrimp.

Guest · Post by **Guest** » Tue Aug 19, 2008 11:48 am

I have just ordered some samples from happy hermit crab and I am going out to get some more things like corn kernels and im going to pick up from freeze dried shrimp as well. I have been feeding our hermies a mix of things mostly fresh vag with there nasty dry food just wanted to change out the dry for something nicer that is far better.

Guest · Post by **Guest** » Tue Aug 19, 2008 1:04 pm

thanks for the comments...

on chopping food into tiny pieces, no, i don't do that, but because my crabs are quite small, especially Heidi, i do get them down to what i think is manageable size for their tiny lil claws....i read somewhere that grounding such stuff too fine, they really can't eat it because they can't pick it up easily...

on animal protein, i have been using the freeze dried shrimp as a protein kibble, but they don't seem too interested, so i thought i might try rehydrating them in some salt water to soften them up a bit and see if they take to that...

they also didn't seem to take to the bit of fresh clam i fed them, and it has me thinking about alternative animal protein sources at my disposal...you mentioned that it should be very lean and i wonder if venison wouldn't be a good source for the protein...very high in that and exceptionally low in fat and we have tons of that on hand all the time...might give it a try, boil up a bit in salt water and cut it down to manageable size...we also eat alot of shrimp, so i might start cooking one up without seasonings in salt water...

and i just read an article on another crab forum extolling the virtues of frozen pinky mice....i don't have the aversion to them that some do, being a former snake owner and, according to this one person's experience, her crabs went wild over them...so i might check out pricing and availability and try them out once i know they are back on their feed properly and are of a size to handle dragging them around and tearing them up without my having to dissect them myself to feed it to them....

blaze88 · Post by **blaze88** » Tue Aug 19, 2008 2:24 pm

Actually pinkies would really mimic their wild "vulture" tendencies. I would never feed them though. (bleh)

MamaZelly · Post by **MamaZelly** » Tue Aug 19, 2008 2:37 pm

Organic baby food works, too--without the ick-factor!

But you won't be able to find "mouse" in that section of the store....

Guest · Post by **Guest** » Tue Aug 19, 2008 2:41 pm

So i have read, I might give that a try, So far I put some worm castings, honey, carrots and with cuttle bone and a little of their dried food until i get a replacement and they have destroyed it, carrots and honey went down well.

Guest · Post by **Guest** » Wed Aug 20, 2008 5:59 pm

today, while reading, i came across a post on another forum that says that a fabulous, easy to maintain and very inexpensive way to give your crabs animal protein is to keep a small tank of fancy guppies...pennies to buy and apparently, just like with the pinky mice, the crabs go wild over them...also said that goldfish are good, but those would be for larger crabs than mine are, unless they were tiny lil babies...

the post did suggest that, unless you are satisfied with your local pet store's fish tank maintenance and feeding practices, you might keep them for awhile in a tank at home with good water and air filtration and put them on a high end diet to ensure they are very healthy before feeding...

i have also found a great way to trap live crickets for feeding...might try this:

take a loaf of stale, hard crust bread (like a french bread baguette)...slice it in half lengthwise and hollow out the soft bead inside a bit all the way to the ends, so that when you place the halves back together, there will be a small hole/tunnel running from end to end inside the loaf...rubber band the loaf together to keep it all in one piece...go out in the evening to where you have seen cricket activity (they like to hide in plants along a wall, near brick and concrete and often will congregate at night wherever there is a light source) and lightly spray the area with the hose (this will draw the crickets for a drink) and set the bead loaf out (on a plate or cardboard so that it does not get soggy)...in the morning, just cover the holes in the end of the loaf with your fingers and place it into a 5 gallon bucket with a screen lid or into a tank and voila...crickets for days!...and your supply, if properly cared for (and it isn't difficult!) will continually regenerate itself...

you can find more about cricket care and feeding here: http://www.nyworms.com/ccare.htm

Guest · Post by **Guest** » Wed Aug 20, 2008 6:26 pm

You might want to indicate that you should kill the crickets before feeding. Crabs are not predators and crickets will breed in your crabitat.

Otherwise it's WONDERFUL advice.