HCA: Hermit Crab Association

What is a rather cheap protein that crabs go nuts over?

Eggs. Dried mealworms - check the wild bird feed section for bigger bags at a better price than those smaller cans in the reptile section.

CallaLily wrote:Eggs. Dried mealworms - check the wild bird feed section for bigger bags at a better price than those smaller cans in the reptile section.

I do have dried mealworms, but I feel like they are getting bored of it and want something that's not dried.

Mine seem to like dried baby shrimp better than mealworms.

Ask to buy 2 shrimp at the grocery store - you'll feel silly, but it'll be around 60 cents and if you come home, chop it into tiny meal sized pieces (for 2 or 3 crabs, one big shrimp would be 6 or more meals) and freeze it, it'll last for a month or longer.

Haha, I asked for just one and they did look at me funny, but I told them what it was for and they didn't charge me for it.

Yeah the Sprouts by my house doesn't charge for a single shrimp either because it doesn't register on their scales.

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Yep, that's where I was.

I managed to steal a couple shrimp from our fried rice meal today before they were cooked. Would the crabs eat the shrimp raw, or would it being cooked be better for them?

Raw is fine. The smellier the better lol.

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Peanut butter!

<3 Gladys, Pico, Zeus, Tango, Tidas! <3

nut butters
shrimp (especially with the exo still on!)
crab
Egg (hardboiled or scrambled in a tiny bit of organic coconut oil)
Whatever meat you might be cooking up for supper but BEFORE you put any seasonings/additives on it
Nuts- I put them in whole and ground- they eat them both ways. Figure out which way your crabs prefer.

Frozen fish food cubes... BUT they are the ones that are ONLY and single ingredient: Bloodworms, brine shrimp, krill, baby shrimp, Silversides

Freeze-dried fish foods... again should only have the ONE ingredient- no preservatives or anything else.
Krill, baby shrimp, bloodworms, daphnia etc...

An easy way to do it is each payday buy a new type. Less hit to your pocket book than getting them all at once, and they last a LONG time because you're not feeding all of them ever single day.