HBH Hermit Crab Variety Bites

[JediMasterThrash]

"Salt" is safe for hermits.

What is not necessarily safe are some of anti-caking agents (such as calcium silicate) they add to table salt to give it the coarse texture and prevent it from getting clumpy.

The salt that is added to food as an ingredient is simply pure salt and is safe. Especially since none of the anti-caking agents are listed as ingredients.

You'll also notice that potassium iodide and glucose are not listed. Those would be other ingredients that would indicate table-salt was used. The lack of these and the lack of anti-caking agents shows table salt wasn't used (though for what it's worth, potassium iodide is probably beneficial for crabs. Iodide helps in the molting process).

[Willow]

I'm going to toss another thought out there... I don't know about the States, but I was under the impression that (at least in Canada) it is not necessary by law to list all ingredients in pet food on the packaging. Could they be not listing them because they feel their inclusion to be negligible?

In the U.S., all ingredients the manufacturer adds must be listed. However, some of the ingredient they use may have other things added.....for instance, most "fish meal" (unnamed fish---not "herring meal" or "salmon meal") in the U.S. is preserved with ethoxyquin. Whether this is present in the finished product in quantities enough to harm your hermies, who knows? I wouldn't use a hermie food containing "fish meal" every day, but I guess I'd use it occasionally.

[Guest]

In the US there has been a lot of speculation that the pet food industry does not list all the ingredients. I'm not saying this is the case here, but I've heard discussion about it on cat forums, rat forums, fish forums, and hermit crab forums. I would say that I tend to lean toward believing it simply because over the years with different pets I've contacted manufactures of foods and have a really hard time getting a specific answer to questions. Wouldn't it be easier to just say "all our ingredients are on the label" but they never do.

[Guest]

I know that dogs are not supposed to have garlic and onions... I'm not sure why garlic/onions are banned as far as hermit crabs go.

garlic for dogs is just not true. it helps to keep fleas off. we have always put a substantial ammout of it in all our dogs' food to keep fleas at bay. my dad's chow has never had fleas and that is the only thing he did for her. lived to be 15 years old... which for a dog her size most don't make it passed 9 or 10 years. so i can't buy that garlic is bad for the dogs...even an old time vet told us to use it in powder form if using dry dog food and if we cook forthe dogs use cloves chopped.

my attitude for my crabbies i offerthem things that they would find in the wild laying on the ground or hanging from a tree. if they don't like it or don't eat it i don't give it again. they have instincts to know what foods are fine and what is not imo. i try to go natural and not give much comercial.. only when i'm on vacation . and then i leave alot of seeds for them. i'm not expert but i believe in letting nature take care of nature. i try not to use chemicals and go with things provided in nature most of the time.

ok now you know i am a flakey conservative nature lover!!LOL!!!

[Guest]

In the U.S., all ingredients the manufacturer adds must be listed. However, some of the ingredient they use may have other things added.....for instance, most "fish meal" (unnamed fish---not "herring meal" or "salmon meal") in the U.S. is preserved with ethoxyquin. Whether this is present in the finished product in quantities enough to harm your hermies, who knows? I wouldn't use a hermie food containing "fish meal" every day, but I guess I'd use it occasionally.

no not all things added do not have to be listed if it not considered an ingredient. for example...wheat flour... my son was on a very special diet for several years. i had to make ALL of his food from scratch. he could have nothing with what of any sort. incredible reactions if he did... frozen french fries are coated in it before freezing. it is NOT on the label. most frozen foods are "dusted" with it as well. sooooooooo you can not trust label. manufactures must be called to really see what the process is... providing that they are truthful.

[Guest]

my attitude for my crabbies i offerthem things that they would find in the wild laying on the ground or hanging from a tree. if they don't like it or don't eat it i don't give it again. they have instincts to know what foods are fine and what is not imo. i try to go natural and not give much comercial.. only when i'm on vacation . and then i leave alot of seeds for them. i'm not expert but i believe in letting nature take care of nature. i try not to use chemicals and go with things provided in nature most of the time.

This is a great philosophy and I agree with it almost completely. We have to be careful with crab instincts in a couple of different areas.

1. You can really only count on a crabs instincts to avoid harmful foods if they are native to a hermit crabs habitat. There is enough evidence that other animals, Iguanas for example, are not as able to distinguish between poisonous and safe foods that are not native to them to make me extra cautious in this area.

2. Kibbles. When a potentially dangerous ingredient is ground up into another larger group a crab may not be able to distinguish what is in there or avoid the particles that might be harmful as they go about eating the ones that aren't.

This isnt saying that onion and garlic are harmful at all. I'm on the fence about it. But it is to add caution to those of you who are going with the hermit crab instinct philosophy of feeding. (Also something I support, in a limited capacity.)

[Guest]

Imneva, I know your frustration with food labels. I have a cow milk allergy. Not lactose intolerance, but an actual allergy. If you drizzle cream down my forearm, I'll break out into hives. Coming from Wikipedia at LINK.

Currently the only treatment for milk allergies is total avoidance of milk proteins. Products in addition to milk itself to be avoided by those with milk allergy include yogurt, butter, cheese, and cream.

Ingredients that also denote that food product contains dairy milk include whey, casein, caseinate, butter flavor, lactic acid, natural or artificial flavors, and sodium caseinate.

It is commonplace for milk or milk derivatives to be included in processed foods such as bread, crackers, cookies, cakes, prepared meats, "soy cheese", soups, gravies, potato chips, margarine, and products labeled "non-dairy", such as whipped topping and creamer (non-dairy simply means less than 0.5% milk by weight[1])

Also, many processed foods that do not contain milk may be processed on equipment contaminated with dairy foods, which may cause an allergic reaction in some sensitive individuals.

How often do you pick up a prepared gravy that you would assume would be dairy free? You don't use dairy when you make it at home. And listing something as non-dairy if it has less than 0.5% milk by weight is misleading. I've definitely reacted to food that did not list milk or milk derived ingredients...

EDIT!!

LINK to a Government of Canada web page about a proposed amendment concerning the inclusion of possible allergens in the ingredient list of prepared foods. And this is for PEOPLE. The pet industry is much worse.

[blaze88]

Phew, Im glad I caught this thread.

First off in the US it is NOT illegal to exclude ingredients in foods. It goes by a state by state basis, there are national standards, but not laws. However, companies usually comply with all states in order to save money on labeling, why would they bother to pay for labels for California (no pet food regulation) or Colorado (tons of pet food regulation). This is why states with laws require you to list where your company is so you can see if they pass any regulation or not.

Now there is a whole other topic of honesty, but...

I think they changes their recipe recently, Petco lists EQ but tcp lists no eq.

Galic is NOT safe, for the same reasons onions are not. I asked a botanist, who is super obsessed with animals, especially reptiles. She said even in small amounts since hermit crabs are so small it would build up relatively quickly.

Crude protein (min.) 19%, crude fat (min.) 10%, crude fiber (max.) 4%, moisture (max.) 10%, ash (max.) 13%.

Shrimp Meal, White Wheat, Red Wheat, Coconut Flakes, Barley, Rye, Oats, Sunflower, Salt, Fish Meal, Wheat Flour, Krill Meal, Pea Powder, Dehydrated Alfalfa Meal, Spirulina Powder, Wheat Germ, Soy Flour, Squid Meal, Brine Shrimp, Zucchini Powder, Beet Powder, Carrot Powder, Spinach Powder, Fish Oil, Calcium Carbonate, Gelatinized Starch, Brewers Dried Yeast, Soy Lecithin, Fish Roe, Wheat Gluten, Glucono-delta-Lactone, Garlic Powder, Natural Mixed Tocopherols, Rosemary Extract, L-ascorbyl-2-polyphosphate (source of Vitamin C), Vitamin A Acetate, Choline Chloride, a-Tocopheryl Acetate (source of Vitamin E), Niacin, d-Calcium Pantothenate, Riboflavin, Thiamine Mononitrate, Biotin, Pyridoxine HCl, Folic Acid, D-Activated Animal Sterol (source of Vitamin D3), Vitamin B12 Supplement, Zinc Proteinate, Copper Proteinate, Magnesium Proteinate, Iron Proteinate, Citric Acid


Also the protein is really low, and mostly grains, which are cheap low quality protein. I also would be concerned about the salt considering you are not required by ANY state to list the ingredients of your ingredients. For example, a company could get banana chips from a banana chip company and only list banana chips as an ingredient, however the banana chips were (banana, olive oil, salt and sugar) and the salt was (salt, anti-cracking agent). Therefor these banana chips have anti-cracking agents, but were not even close to listed in the food ingredients.

This is in addition not a complete diet, it has no where near enough protein or fiber.

[JediMasterThrash]

My bottle actually lists even less protein. It lists:
Min. Crude Protein 15%
Min. Crude Fat 10%
Max. Crude Fiber 7%
Max. Moisture 12%

They don't even list the ash content.

Crab Island on the other hand has 25% protein. And it lists max moisture and ash at both 8%. Crab Island also does not contain salt or garlic powder.

The big difference to me, though was that HBH contains some actual meat (shrimp meal, fish meal, krill meal, squid meal, brine shrimp, fish oil) while Crab Island contains none. It relies on it's special "hempola" brand organic protein thing.

The benefit to Crab Island is that since it doesn't have any fish meal, it doesn't have any tag-along EQ. But the list of seafood in the HBH seemed otherwise good at the time.

Of course both brands say their food is a complete diet. However, commercial food is only about 1/2 to 1/5th of my crabs' diet. I supplement the other 1/2 to 4/5ths with natural/organic foods.

I'm glad I started this thread, ton's of good information from all the food experts!

[Guest]

Galic is NOT safe, for the same reasons onions are not.

For the sake of having all the information, that reason is...

[blaze88]

http://www.howtopedia.org/en/How_to_Use ... escription

This site says it has pesticide purposes.

I am sorry, but I forget the specific thing it does, because I have been inactive on the forum that I talked to the botanist on my account was deleted.

[JediMasterThrash]

http://www.howtopedia.org/en/How_to_Use ... escription

This site says it has pesticide purposes.

I am sorry, but I forget the specific thing it does, because I have been inactive on the forum that I talked to the botanist on my account was deleted.

True, but I already talked about that in one of my first posts on page 1:

Garlic is an insecticide. However, that doesn't necessarily mean trace amounts are bad. As we know, many things can be beneficial in small quantities and harmful in large quantities. It looks like it requires an entire garlic bulb per two cups of water to be effective against tiny plant insects. Also, it's immediate, and not cummulative. All citrus fruits also contain an insecticide element (Limonene, probably why citrus used to be on the no-no-list, but even now it's on the EH safe list). However, I don't think anyone's experienced a crab dying from eating an orange lately. Of all the insects usually referenced, mites are probably the closest to crabs in the genetic tree, but they still don't have the exact same anatomy, and if it takes a 1:2 concentration to kill something the size of a pinhead, I'm not immediately worried about .001 milligrams in some food. I wouldn't feed it to them raw of course though.

From the responses, it seems we still don't have a conclusion about whether minute quantities of garlic are harmful or not. Unless you have any more information about it. I haven't been able to find any sources of information about garlic "building up" in the system over time (though I won't doubt it, I just like to find more sources of info before I think of something as fact).

[Guest]

I'm with JMT on this one. It's one of those things that we just don't know about and I doubt that a minute amount of it will be harmful. Garlic has some very beneficial properties as well.

I think it also bears noting that not all insecticide plants affect all insects. It's pretty insect specific so that just because a food is an insecticide doesn't mean it will be harmful to crabs.

It does warrant caution but also investigation.

[Hermie Lover]

Nice thread...at one time, I used this same food....my crabs loved it, and my E's would fight over it...

However, after feeding them this food, I started seeing deformed legs on 90% of my crabs when they would come up from molts...mostly on the E's, a couple of the PP's and 2 straws.

So, I eliminated this food, and it did show the colors, and the EQ in the ingredient list....so, I threw this stuff away, and have not fed it to my crabs since....I didn't want to chance any more bad molts....