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Crabs are uninterested in supplements
Posted: Sun May 03, 2020 9:51 am
by avocadocrabbies
I feed my crabs a variety of foods, including dried and fresh. As recommended, there is also a ton of supplemental wood, bark, sticks, etc. for them to nibble on. I have cholla (from Arizona) oak tree bark and sticks, and dried leaves. All have been doused with dechlor saltwater and baked to sterilize (I thought the salt water would make them like it, as the crabs like it when I boil their shells in salt water). However, they have all gone untouched. Do I just have picky crabs?
Re: Crabs are uninterested in supplements
Posted: Sun May 03, 2020 11:02 am
by Motörcrab
Crabs can be picky and tough to figure out. Sometimes they won't touch something for weeks then just decide they love it and eat it all the time. Then completely reject again. Do you offer everything all the time? I found that the crabs are more inclined to try different things if you rotate through them. Maybe offer leaf litter for 3-4 days every two weeks and the same with the other items. You can probably come up with some rotation schedule that seems to work.
Also you should only need to boil the shells when you first purchase them before putting them in the tank for time. A simple rinse in your dechlorinated saltwater to rinse the shells is perfectly fine. I read a few horror stories of people thinking they checked all the shells very well before boiling.
Re: Crabs are uninterested in supplements
Posted: Sun May 03, 2020 8:15 pm
by avocadocrabbies
Motörcrab wrote: ↑Sun May 03, 2020 11:02 am
Crabs can be picky and tough to figure out. Sometimes they won't touch something for weeks then just decide they love it and eat it all the time. Then completely reject again. Do you offer everything all the time? I found that the crabs are more inclined to try different things if you rotate through them. Maybe offer leaf litter for 3-4 days every two weeks and the same with the other items. You can probably come up with some rotation schedule that seems to work.
Also you should only need to boil the shells when you first purchase them before putting them in the tank for time. A simple rinse in your dechlorinated saltwater to rinse the shells is perfectly fine. I read a few horror stories of people thinking they checked all the shells very well before boiling.
rotation sounds like a good idea
also for the shells, that probably didn't come across clearly. I don't regularly boil them, just once when I get them (I am constantly bringing home and buying new ones, my shell shop has a rotation schedule
) and I rinse them occasionally when they get dirty after a while.