Mineral Supplement Recipe

[wendyj]

Does anyone have a mineral supplement recipe?

[MudCrabDude]

Does anyone have a mineral supplement recipe?

Perhaps you can use this one made by Christa:

http://hermit-crabs.com/food.html

Here is a good recipe for regular crab food which satisfies the crabs' taste preference and need for calcium to build a strong exoskeleton.

2 large cuttlebones
1 cup dried rice (any non-instant type)
1 cup unflavored oatmeal
1 tsp. salt, uniodized*
1/4 cup dried plankton, krill or any other very stinky dried sealife
2 tablespoons spirulina powder (you can buy this at almost any health food store)
*Do not use table salt, but sea salt or aquarium salt

Break up the cuttlebones with your hands into nickel-or-dime-size chunks. Using an electric coffee grinder, powder them. Sometimes they get stuck in the blades -- if so, stop grinding and poke them out of the blades and continue grinding. Take all remaining ingredients except the salt and grind them into a sort of lumpy powder fine powder. The krill won't completely grind so just get it to where you can stand it. Add in the salt and any other things you think your crabs will enjoy, such as cornmeal, cracker meal, bread crumbs (unflavored), wheat germ, ground nuts, seeds, etc. Mine especially like a dose of ground flax seed now and then.

Since this is VERY high in calcium (two whole large cuttlebones are a double-whammy), it is an excellent food for your crabs who are exhibiting molting signs or those who have recently molted. It does not have much carotene though so please add in a source of it, like carrot flakes or some raw carrot.

[cutecrustacean]

could fluker's freeze dried river shrimp be a substitute for the krill? It's what I have, and I'm having a ton of molts lately.

[MudCrabDude]

Yup!