HCA: Hermit Crab Association

Has anyone had any luck with dehydrating fruits and vegetables for their crabs?

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Many crabbers do this. You can use a dehydrator or use an oven.
I personally have had success drying things in the oven before. I leave the door cracked and set the temperature as low as I can get it, let it go for awhile and check up on things occasionally (it can take several hours.)

I use a dehydrator and an oven all of the time! It depends on what I'm dehydrating.

We just scored a Nesco American Harvest dehydrator with 4 extra racks and tray liners on Craigslist yesterday for $40! I have my fist batch of stuff in it now! Bananas, strawberries, kiwi, blueberries, pineapple, tomatoes, carrots, and broccoli.

We bought a small cheap dehydrator a few months ago. Everytime we used it the plastic trays cracked more and more. After 3 or 4 uses it was worthless.

I'm excited to see how well it works and to try dehydrating all kinds of stuff.

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Here is my first batch of dehydred food. Broccoli, kiwi, cherry tomatoes, carrots, strawberries, pineapple, and banana. For my carrots, broccoli, I steamed them for 2 minutes before dehydrating, it's supposed to change the cell structure to help dehydrate better. The tomatoes, and blueberries I boiled to open up the skins.

Everything was ready the following morning about 8-10 hours except the bananas and blueberries. After work 18- hours later the bananas we're ready, the blueberries took another 4-5 hours almost 24 hours total.

I can see why it cost so much when you order this stuff. It's a lot of prep work and time. It's not hard just a little time consuming cutting, steaming, dipping, and boiling before the stuff is ready to dehydrate. 3 bananas got me about 1 1/2 small baby food jars. A tray of strawberries equal about 1 jar. With our food rotation this batch should easily get us about 2 months of feedings for 14-15 crabs in 2 tanks.

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Nice! They look like they turned out good.


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