Lilymouse385 wrote:Um, okay so I was looking at the food lists and stuff, and I have a question...
What's the deal with All Living Things? I bought their pellets and salt water stuff because that was all my petsmart had. Will my crabs be okay? Also my substrate is really dry, do I just mist it or what?
When I first got started, I bought all the All LIving Things stuff too, and a bunch of calci-sand, and it was SO not helpful... I ended up having to toss most of it, or take it back to the store. Very frustrating, but unfortunately you're not alone in having done that. The pet store industry is not interested in having our crabs live for 10-20+ years, only for 1-2 years or so, so they can sell us more. The Advocacy Forum has a lot of information on why this is, and what we can do about it. Most things marketed for hermit crabs are overpriced, inefficient, or downright harmful.
Crabs need access to both saltwater and freshwater, in containers large enough that they can submerge if desired, but can safely climb out. Many of us use nested tupperware containers with plastic craft mesh secured to the edge of the container with zip ties. The craft mesh provides a ramp of sorts. In the Pictures Forum you can see folks' tanks and setups, and there are many examples of this, let us know if you can't find it.
For saltwater, many of us use Instant Ocean Sea Salt, which is a saltwater aquarium product. It's very popular (you should be able to find it at Walmart for instance), here's a link to the stuff in the purple box, although you can also use the orange box (it's called Reef Crystals Reef Salt).
http://www.instantocean.com/Products/Se ... xture.aspx
It's very important to have the right mineral mix in your saltwater - they need a product that mimics the ocean as closely as possible, and Instant Ocean does that. There's a great care sheet about freshwater, saltwater, and how/why to use a dechlorinator, which I'd recommend you read, as it lays it out pretty clearly, along with test results from folks who've tried a lot of different products to see which actually had the right amount and type of salt. The all living things hermit crab water does not have the minerals/nutrients that the crabs need.
For freshwater, tapwater with an appropriate dechlorinator, such as API or Prime, is a good solution, although there is a variety of water sources that HCA members use. A dechlorinator is essential because it removes harmful chlorine and chloramine, which can burn hermit crab gills. Also, crabs are sensitive to heavy metals, most of which are toxic to them. A good dechlorinator removes the chlorine, ammonia, nitrates/nitrites, and heavy metals. If your water supply has those items in it, removal of all those items is needful for optimal crab health.
A good substrate to start with is playsand / coconut fiber (such as Eco-Earth) mixed in a 5:1 (by volume) ratio, moistened to sandcastle consistency with marine saltwater (such as Instant Ocean mixed according to the instructions on the box). Sand marketed for hermit crabs is often calci-sand, or calcium sand. This clumps badly when wet and can stick crabs in their shells as it hardens to a concrete-like consistency when it dries out. Also it doesn't hold hermit crab molting caves well. You can find playsand (also may be known as all purpose sand) at the hardware store for maybe $5 for a 50 lb bag. It's a quartz silica sand that doesn't clump and holds molting caves well when moistened appropriately. Be sure not to breathe the sand dust when it's dry - mixing up your substrate is a good task to do outside if you're able.
Substrate depth should be 6" minimum or three times the height of your largest crab, whichever is deeper. This is to hold the molting caves properly and give enough room for them to burrow and molt without running into each other. If a molting crab gets interrupted by a non-molting crab, the non-molting crab will often eat the molting crab. So deep substrate moistened to sandcastle consistency is really important for safe crab molting. Good crab nutrition, with a variety of calcium and protein sources, also helps cut down on cannibalism.
The only commercial crab food that I use is FMR Fruit Treat. It actually has safe ingredients and no preservatives, and my crabs love it. But crabs need a variety of nutrients, and the main staple of their diet should actually be protein (see the food pyramid in the care sheets).
Some easy people foods you may already have on hand that you can feed them right now as you search for proper food for them - organic coconut oil or dried coconut, scrambled egg with eggshell (with no salt, butter, etc, basically rinse and dry a raw egg, then crush up the entire egg including the shell into a bowl, then microwave the egg until it's cooked. You can chop this up into quarter inch pieces, feed them one piece a couple times a week, and store the rest in the freezer), oak and maple leaves and branches (if you live in an area where they don't spray for mosquitoes and your trees are not treated with pesticides or herbicides), pecans or almonds (raw unsalted, organic if you can find it), bee pollen, and organic honey.
From the reptile section of the pet store, you can find dried river shrimp or dried krill - you might want to crush this up well with a mortar and pestle to encourage your hermits to eat it. Some folks have good luck feeding canned insects, I've only had luck getting mine to eat the dried ones, and I had to crush all of those up or they wouldn't touch them. Also, crabs LOVE cuttlebone. It's an awesome calcium source which is easy to find in the pet store - it's marketed for turtles.
Hope this helps a bit. Let us know if you have more questions!
but the smaller one likes me, so I picked him up and let him explore around the outside of his tank and on my hand. I put him up before I went to bed, and I woke up this morning to find the big one in the corner and the small one gone!? (he took his shell with him though).
