Table Salt?

[Geranium]

Because the question came up on a FB post today and I found a post on the subject from our own JMT here, I thought it worth a bit of discussion. It was my understanding that the iodine in table salt was a problem and we needed to avoid salt for the crabs.More from our own site here.

[Laurie LeAnn]

In the malls and pet shops some will tell you that you can use sea salt. We used that til I found this site. My feelings are you bought a wild creature and you need to simulate its environment as close as you can. They made salt for aquariums for fish and creatures with this in mind and salt for for people and other uses like special salt to melt ice..You wouldn't use it in your crab tank would you? So your better off to buy the salt made for aquariums not risking harming your crabs in the long run. Did you know that regular table salt will kill fleas? Sprinkle on your floors and else where let sit for several hours, we did Kyle's apartment for 12 then vac ed it up, gave his ferrets a bath in dawn dish soap, waited 3 days treated them w revolution kitten dip and no fleas!

[Geranium]

This does not propose using table salt in water but discusses the long held belief that any added salt in food is dangerous.

[jenok]

Here is what I "believe". Most people and or factories use a large amount of salt for our own needs/wants. The crabs are a lot smaller than us and process foods differently so it has been suggested not to use table salt simply cuz most use too much and its hard to say how much is too much so better safe than sorry. It seems like the occasional bit/grain of salt added or low sodium cracker is ok but be careful how much and how often it is given.

[Crabber85]

Normal table salt gets added to all commercial hermitcrab diets and is found in most baby foods that we like to give our little ones so to say that table salt is bad in and of itself is a very broad statement, though I have done quite a bit of research of my own into the subject a few years ago and I was able to find some info that JMT either missed or didn't have available at the time which kind of contradicts what we think we know about the manufacturing process of table salt.Table salt is obtained one of three ways ie: its mined via drilling or fracking, evaporated from sea water or dug up from surface deposits.Drilling, Fracking(this is a mining process that utilizes water and chemical additives being injected into the bed rock at high pressure which causes the rock to split into a thousand pieces and those pieces get brought to the surface and deposited, the runoff from this process underground has led to the contamination of area water tables for miles around and has been responsible for the destruction of local water systems, this process also contaminates the product being mined out of the ground., drilling causes other kinds of contaminations which involves metal shavings from the drill bit getting into the salt, these metal shavings are supposed to be screened out at a later time but not all of them are.We know that certain metals are harmful to our hermitcrabs so wouldn't it stand to reason that these leftover metal shavings or chemical run off would have a decidedly negative impact on such small animals like hermitcrabs?Personally I really don't even trust the table salts that claim to be made from evaporated sea water but if pressed this is the type of table salt production method I would go with over drilling or fracking.The bigger problem here is that the companies who make these table salts don't actually have to make their methods of obtaining public knowledge so you wont know just by reading the box you'd have to call the customer support number and even then you may not get an answer.I do know that the table salt produced locally in my state is a no go for me because the production plant in Atlanta got fined a few years back for a chemical leak into the local water systems that nearly caused the company to shut down.They use an anti-caching ingredient dubbed Yellow because it turns from white to yellow in the presence of water and somehow it got out into a tributary system on the north side of the perimeter and nearly wiped out the aquatic life, the FDA and the EPA stepped in and temporarily shut the plant down and had to do an emergency containment to stop the stuff from spreading down stream.I remember it being all over the news that summer which was around the time I graduated high school.Basically one of the containment units that held the anti-caching agent got hit by a forklift driver and around 300 gallons of it went into the floor drain and out into the creek.This stuff off gases when it meets fresh water in liquid state and literally depletes the oxygen levels of the water until the fish and other aquatic life suffocate.I'm not sure how they got the stuff from liquid to solid ie powder form unless they were adding something else and then flash burning it to get a chemical reaction that converted it but anyway the FDA got agent Yellow banned but who knows what else is being used in its place now.The company sold out to a foreign firm not to long after the breech, I believe its Swedish but I'm not sure.I just ran a cursory search on the plant and its not in operation anymore, it appears that another firm bought it out from the former owners and then moved it to somewhere in the middle east, I'm thinking it may be one of the production facilities out at the Red Sea mining site now from the new info I was able to obtain.Anyway I agree that table salt in its raw form is pretty harmless to hermitcrabs when given in small amounts but it doesn't contain enough of the other essential minerals that sea water has to be of much benefit nutritionally.Interesting side note table salt is an excellent stain remover specifically for stubborn blood and dark wine stains in carpet.Apparently it has a remarkable wicking property interesting no...

[Geranium]

Thanks Crabber85! I hoped you would have more detailed information. It just surprised me to find the old posts. So, I dont need to make myself crazy trying to eliminate salt or not give them something because I forgot and salted it, just be cautious. Good to know. I dont use iodized salt anyway but I am on doctor's orders to salt my food with sea salt or vegetable salt, my blood sodium levels were too low.

[Crabber85]

@Geranium, yeah I don't worry to much about table salt these days because its in every brand of hermitcrab food you can think of both the good and the bad so it has some benefit to it in very very small doses, salt is highly regulated in the food industry even in pet foods so we know that less than 40mgs is being used per bottle of hermitcrab food and around 20mgs is in most baby foods about half of the sodium content in these packages is from naturally occurring sources ie the salt that forms in fruits and veggies.I don't go out of my way to avoid table salt as that would severely limit my options for hermitcrab foods but I do try to limit it as much as possible.Like JMT has said before everything is toxic in high enough quantities even water so just be mindful of that and you should be golden.I personally prefer natural sea salt in the food I eat as it contains a naturally occurring form of Iodine so my daily requirement for that is met without having to expose myself to to much.Kelp and other types of edible seaweed are loaded with natural Iodine and are a good way to get the amount you need without all the salt.Interesting fact, did you know that you can use regular table salt to kill snails and slugs in your garden they crawl through it and it literally dries them out kind of like the way diatomacious earth does insects earth worms also respond to a salt treatment the same way though this fact was accidentally discovered as earth worms are a farmers best friend, its a pretty quick and effective natural means of dealing with what some deem as pests.

[Herman Coen]

Yes, this is good news as almost everything contains medium to high levels of sodium, but I do find myself more concerned with finding foods that have been raised organically as the chemicals are not as natural.