HCA: Hermit Crab Association

Hello! what do you all put in your supplement dish? I wanted to buy some of the mineral supplement from the hermit crab patch but I can't get over their shipping cost. Currently I rotate oyster shells, worm castings, crushed shells, eggshells, crushed starfish, crushed cuttlebone, and a powdered calcium. I have some sand dollars but the crabs don't seem to touch them so I was thinking of crushing them up to see if they would be more interested in them. I am just looking for more ideas and I want to see what other people use.

My water question is if I put tap water into gallon jugs and let it sit for a few days will it be fine? Do I still need to add dechlorinator to it?

Thanks!

My supplement dish has the mineral supplement from the Hermit Crab Patch, crushed oyster shell, crushed egg shell, crushed seashell and sand dollars. I use a separate dish for worm castings. THCP has pricey shipping for stuff, but she will refund you the difference if it ends up costing them less to send stuff.

I would still go ahead and treat the water to remove everything that might be in it; better safe than sorry

In the supplement dish I do THCP's Mineral Supplement, spirulina powder, crushed oyster shells, THCP's Hibiscus Coral Calcium (I think it's called), and/or another plain calcium powder. I also have bigger calcium pits that are always in the tanks that have a thin, dry layer of natural calcium sand (making use of some that came with an adoption), cuttlebone, and crushed or broken seashells. I also toss eggshell halves in the tanks pretty often.

This thread answers your question about the water: viewtopic.php?f=25&t=92553.

I always keep bonemeal powder, earthworm castings, and HCP mineral supplement in my supplements dish. I remember someone on here mentioning that they were pretty sure the mineral supplement is montmorillonite clay. I have a container left from my dog, so I'm planning to switch to that when I run out of the stuff from HCP. My crabs also get crushed shells in their flower/leaf dish, and I have an eggshell half in the tank all of the time now, which they love. I think when I get more of it, I'm going to start keeping bee pollen in the supplements dish as well...and I may add my seaweed mix or spirulina as well & see what they think.

I just ordered from THCP and I thought $5.99 priority mail (or was it $6.something?) was good for shipping.Most places shipping went up and can be much higher for smaller items.
But I guess it depends were you live.

I just use powdered cuttlebone mixed with white calci-sand and crushed egg shell and my group seems to love this mix.

I also keep a sizable chunk of cuttlebone in the tat at all times so that the crabs can nibble on that if they feel like which they often do.

Putting crushed coral or dolomite in the mix would also help but I have coral in their drinking water which dissolves into the water over time increasing water hardness and makes some calcium available to them when the drink which seems to have helped with their molts a great deal.

As for your water question yes you still have to use a good tap water conditioner because heavy metals and chloramine do not evaporate out like standard chlorine and letting the water sit and allowing some of it to escape as evaporation actually causes the water that's left behind to become pretty polluted as the concentration of the chloramine and heavy metals becomes higher the lower the water volume gets.

thank you for the ideas! i will look into these. my crabs didn't seemed to interested with the cuttlebone so hopefully they will like it crushed.

i thought of another question.

do you switch out your supplement dish as regular as your food? I feel like it could be left a few days because sometimes the crabs don't touch it.

I leave mine in until it needs refilled. Castings and crushed oyster shell can't spoil.

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I refresh it every so often - maybe once a week. My crabs usually empty it quickly but if there's any left, I just dump it in the substrate. Usually what's left is some of the crushed oyster shells. It's definitely not refreshed as often as the food dish.

I change mine every 7-10 days. Usually by that point it's more poop than supplement.

Same here I typically just change it out once every two weeks because by that time the dish is mostly substrate and crab noodles.lol