HCA: Hermit Crab Association

Those commercials foods that are listed do contain a lot of good ingredients, such as calcium, protein, etc. I usually feed the commercials foods to my crabs about once every couple weeks and then the rest of the time they get fruits, nuts, and veggies.

If you DO feed them those foods, don't give them a lot. A little should be fine. Even though they do have good ingredients doesn't mean that they are good. Make sure you always check what's inside your hermit's food. I guess if you can't get your hermit's diet balanced with fresh foods, you can give them safe commercial foods, or give them fresh foods with commercial foods once a week or something.

I am planning on researching a little bit mroe about ethoxyquin. Maybe this summer.[/u]

I have had several crab deaths, and I firmly believe that it is from the bad chemicals in the crab food. I had HBH Hermit Crab Variety Bites, but I have stopped using it, since it has almost all of the bad preservatives in it.

I got the information from a Microsoft dictionary that came with my computer, incase anyone is wondering. Someone asked me where I got it from or something.

I'm a lil confused... Is copper sulphate the same as copper sulfate? I'm pretty sure, just needed clarification.

Do you mean that copper sulfate is listed twice on your label? On mine I have: Copper Proteinate, Copper Proteinate. Weird?

I was at a petstore today and I saw little packs of Colored coral. They were dipped in paint I think or died (however you spell it) Is it ok for hermit crabs?

I would stay away from anything that does not exist in nature. If it is coloured by chemicals I would not use it. The crabs will eat it and get sick.

If anyone has anymore ingredients to add, they can PM me or post, so I can edit the post and add the ingredient. Please add why it is bad, too.

I highly wouldn't recommend feeding commercials foods, They got preservative and they had something that MAKE hermit crabs wants to eat more.

Thats why home make food is more healthier than take outs. They do need a chemical that makes us think it's yummier than usual to make us want more.

I wouldn't feed even a little to them...

I think we need to be cautious about drawing conclusions from limited information. We don’t actually have any research that shows that preservatives are toxic to crabs. We certainly don’t have any research telling us that commercial hermit crab foods are addictive.

We do have information, based on what we know about crab nutrition (albeit limited) and commercial food ingredients, that many commercial foods are primarily made up of fillers and are not the most nutritious options for crabs. Our informal observations show us that crabs grow faster and tend to have better coloring with a diet mostly made up of human-grade fruits, vegetables and meats. We know that processed foods tend to have lower nutritional content than fresh foods. We also have yet to find and benefits of crabs consuming preservatives, and some reason to believe they might be harmful. We know that research on crab nutrition and safety is very limited, but we are concerned about possible pesticide exposure from non-organic commercial and fresh foods.

That’s about all we know, and with that information we can make a strong case for an all-natural diet. I feed an all-natural diet and would recommend nothing else….but I feel like sometimes we damage our credibility on this issue by stretching beyond what we know to say that certain commercial foods are toxic, or will kill crabs, or will make them sick when we have no real evidence of that.

remember the epicurian site! clicky here for the link!

For those of you that are interested there is an excellent discussion of additives including EQ in the archives.


Archives Link

i used 2 feed my hermies commercial foods until one died b\c of a deformed molt

True, sodium chloride is the salt in table salt but iodine is an additional, separate additive put in table salt starting back in the 1930s or so to prevent goiter (humans need a certain amount of iodine for proper thyroid function). Iodine is not naturally occurring in NaCl, it would have to be listed as its own ingredient. Is NaCl without the iodine dangerous for crabs?