commercial food discussion

[Guest]

*blinks* I'm with Robin-I find all of this fascinating, I just wish I was good enough at chemistry to understand more than half of it! Can someone tell a poor confused crabber what a dime is, besides a small coin valued at 1/10th of a dollar?

The word is dimer. It just means two molecules stuck together into one bigger molecule. Ethoxyquin dimerizes and even polymerizes, which means it creates long chains of many ethoxyquin molecules joined together. The polymers can be bad because the body may not be able to get rid of them as easily.

[Guest]

ok..after reading EVERYTHING posted on this one topic..I believe that I am going to go aunatural.
OR I will sit my happy-butt down in THE MIDDLE OF THE AISLE in my pet stores and read EVERY LAST ingredient in the food to make sure it is SAFE!
*puts foot down*
Problem solved!
*giggles*
:roll:
I got this covered!
Thanks for ALL the important and GREAT info!!!!
MUCH THANKS!
Shannon

[Guest]

I am used to reading labels because I have to read every last thing on ech thing I buy and try to determine if it has wheat as I have gluten intolerence and just about everything out there has wheat.

Guess my new guys will have to get what I eat, all natural,not preservitives. A little unseasoned and salted part of my dinner.

I wasn not aware of EQ until I came here but I am very active on a Goldfish forum and I am wondering if this stuff contributes to problems attributed to processed fish food.

A good discussion, would have liked to have sat in on the chat.

Annette

[Guest]

Okay, just wondering here (I didn't read it all, don't kill me) is there ANY proof of what it does to crustateans? I mean, yes, in dogs, humans, and other mammals it has terrible results. But our crabbins are not mammals, and may respond quite differently.

Have you ever heard of a crab with cancer?

I quite honestly feed them their food, and they like it, and they're healthy. We're all gonna die one way or another. You can't be afraid of everything in the world. As long as there is no evidence that this causes a whole lot of trouble in crabs, I keep feeding it.

As for those who say "But I have lost no molters, since I made my own food." Perhaps the food you were feeding LACKED certain things? We all know that petfoods are mostly filler, which is why my babies get fresh foods on the side.

[Guest]

Okay, just wondering here (I didn't read it all, don't kill me) is there ANY proof of what it does to crustateans? I mean, yes, in dogs, humans, and other mammals it has terrible results. But our crabbins are not mammals, and may respond quite differently.

Have you ever heard of a crab with cancer?

I quite honestly feed them their food, and they like it, and they're healthy. We're all gonna die one way or another. You can't be afraid of everything in the world. As long as there is no evidence that this causes a whole lot of trouble in crabs, I keep feeding it.

As for those who say "But I have lost no molters, since I made my own food." Perhaps the food you were feeding LACKED certain things? We all know that petfoods are mostly filler, which is why my babies get fresh foods on the side.

I agree.. somewhat. I do offer commercial food, and I've seen crabs stuck in their exoskeleton (not that belonged to me), but that isn't exactly fault of Ethoxyquin... it could be anything. I'm going to keep offering them this food, even though before I was paranoid of Ethoxyquin. Good point, Yartac!

[MacandHunter]

Okay, just wondering here (I didn't read it all, don't kill me) is there ANY proof of what it does to crustateans? I mean, yes, in dogs, humans, and other mammals it has terrible results. But our crabbins are not mammals, and may respond quite differently.

Have you ever heard of a crab with cancer?

I quite honestly feed them their food, and they like it, and they're healthy. We're all gonna die one way or another. You can't be afraid of everything in the world. As long as there is no evidence that this causes a whole lot of trouble in crabs, I keep feeding it.

As for those who say "But I have lost no molters, since I made my own food." Perhaps the food you were feeding LACKED certain things? We all know that petfoods are mostly filler, which is why my babies get fresh foods on the side.

I agree but I am not gonna take any chances on my crabs. I'll wait for more proof.

[Guest]

See, I recall some time ago, when I was a noobin crabber... that people told me:

OMG CITRUS IS EVIL! er... why? noone could tell me, and now everyone has changed their stance on that one.

We were also using gravel, and just starting to use sand.

Everytime we have some new information, the entire herd runs after it, without thinking about it properly. Yes, EQ is BAD on mammals. But do we really know what it does on our crabs? Mine have been getting this food for 1 1/2 years now, and noone has suffered from stuck exo (not counting my jumbo Bhaal, who has been tortured by mites, got bricked into sand and had to molt within his shell)

So far, I have lost a few rescues due to petstore trauma (I have a nack for buying crabs beyond repair) one to me being an idiot (collapsed her ISO and broke her BP off >.<) and one to unknow reasons, since we were away on holidays. They may not have had food, if my husbands mother forgot about that. And ofcourse Bhaal who had trouble from the day I got him.

The rest? 24 happy crabbins, mostly rescues that DID survive their damages, 7 adoptions, and my starting group of crabs. Ask Mo (Asmoday) what she think of their food Dang thing has been in her dish for 24 hours straight, shoveling the Kaytee coconut, Kaytee apple, FMR treat, zoomed pellets and tetra fauna pellets into her mouth.

Call me stubborn, but I am someone who likes to live life day by day, without worrying too much about what all can kill me. I wont sit here sniffing markers and sticking my head in the microwave.. but I just try to carry on with life. And my pets better adapt to that life as well Better a short life with a full tummy, than go starving and live to be a 100.

[Gorthaur]

I agree with Yartac - My first four crabs have been eating commercial food regularly for more than a year now and each has molted perfectly at least three times, so I'm not absolutely convinced that they are being harmed.

[Guest]

People do have a point saying that there might not be a correlation between diet and all of the problems we see in captive crabs. There is just no real way of knowing how many crabs have bad molts in the wild. It stands to reason that now that there are more crabs in captivity, we'd be seeing more bad molts.

However, feeding and nutrition should be about harm reduction. A human being CAN live on McDonald's and prepackaged food like TV dinners, but in the end, their health is going to make them pay for it. Cancer, alzheimer's, parkinson's, genetic damage and passing on to offspring things like depression and learning disorders, as well as autism. The fact of the matter is that there is a scale of food from healthy to not healthy.

Crabs, like people, can live a long time on an unhealthy diet. But in their best interests, their owner should do the best they can and offer the healthiest and most nutritious foods they are able, just for the sake of their pet's health. This is just my opinion. But in investigating food for my crabs, and what is healthiest for them and their long term survival, I've learned a lot about human food and what is in it, how it's made and how it's killing us all slowly.

I feel that feeding regimes go from healthiest to least healthy in this order:

1. Organic natural human grade fresh food
2. Commercially grown agribusiness human grade fresh food
3. Commercial pet food

Any combination of those falls in between the two.

This isn't to say a crab can't live a long and healthy life on pellets. But that's not what they eat in the wild. They eat better, grow faster, are more colorful, and are healthier and longer-lived on natural foods.

This is a matter of opinion, however. I'm basing my opinion on what I know of the crabs' actual biology. It's my choice to feed almost exclusively human grade organic foods.

But my stating how I feel about it isn't an attempt to say EVERYONE should do so. If you are happy with your crabs' diet and are comfortable with how you are feeding them, then there's no reason to change.

After having one of my cats put to sleep last month because of what commercial food did to him and his liver, I personally will continue to advocate harm reduction in diet and will say unequivocally if asked, commercial food is the least nutritious, and most harmful, way to feed an animal.

Just my own opinion. Everyone is free to make up their own minds, of course. Whatever makes the coenobita happy, in the end, is all that matters.

[Guest]

I very much agree with the fact that commercial petfoods are JUNK. And I don't mean just crab food.

Look at ferret food.. rat food... Ferret food: main ingredients.. corn... wheat.. rice.. WTH? Do you think ermines and such nibble corn cobs in the wild? Nah, they eat juicy mice! My brother feeds feeder mice to his ferrets after I showed him an article on commercial foods... He still gives them kibble, but also jummy mice and eggs and ground beef... And they love it. In the Netherlands you are allowed to breed ferrets, which keeps their temperaments like that.

My brother in law has Marshall ferrets, which have every bit of wildness bred out of them... they rather eat cereal and fruit -.-; Wont eat egg or cooked chicken even.

Dog foods... filled with corn.. CORN? What wolf eats corn?

Rat food, filled with alfalfa pellets.. tiny grains What rat eats grass? Seriously... I make my own rat food from lab blocks, uncooked pasta and unsweetened cereals... they get fresh fruits and veggies and occasionally dog treats.

So yes, I am not someone to sit back and just take things as they come. But preservatives and the likes.. those are almost impossible to work out of ones diet unless you have too much time and money on your hands. I certainly take great care of my pets when it comes to nutricients... I just try not to look at all the things that could possibly maybe eventually in time cause cancer. Breathing causes cancer, sun causes cancer..

[Guest]

i take a very common sense approach to the care and feeding of all my animals....i guess i do a very good job as i have a horse that is 41+ years old....confirmed by my vet and he has been her vet for 30 of those years...
hermies are scavengers and even in the wild don't have a perfect diet...i remember seeing some in florida eating leftover taco belle....hermies know what they need and as long as variety is provided they will meet their nutritional needs...they survived a very long time in the wild without caretakers monitoring their diet....i believe that variety and lots of it is the key

that is not to say that i haven't loved the discussion that has been going on...thanks for all of the detailed info....i have been a health care provider for a long time and love to read posts that are well researched and presented...

[Guest]

i'm not sure where i stand with the whole crab commercial food thing. i had stopped feeding commercial food probably 8 months ago, long before i started reading all the stuff about the preservatives in it, i noticed my crabbies seemed to like natural food better and weren't touching the commercial food when i gave it to them. so i figured i was wasting food and money by feeding it to them, so i stopped.

but the whole thing with the dog and cat food really hit me hard. my dog at my parents house is 13 now, and is getting all kinds of weird stuff beginning to happen to her. i just assumed it was doggie old age happening, but after reading the things about EQ, i'm starting to rethink it. i looked at her canned food and it's got EQ and copper sulfate in it. and she's been getting horrible skin irritations and won't stop itching even though there's no reason for her to itch. the same with our 7 year old cat and her food has EQ in it too. makes me think if this is effecting them how everyone is saying that it does, and not just old age happening. i gotta wonder what these pet food companies are thinking and how they can knowingly do this to animals.

[BAB]

I'm new to the crabbie-diet-land but I know that once I get things down pat on what they can and cannot eat they will be getting variety like all the other critters in my home.

I did have a new crabbie question from someone who's been reading most of the posts here:
How can we be so sure that it's the food we are feeding our little guys that's causing so many molting problems as much as it could be from the environment they are coming from? I'm under the impression that all the little captive hermie friends are from the wild and we should all be able to recognize the terrible pollution happening in the wild, especially on the coast lines that I'm reading more spieces are from. Pollution will always cause long-term issues and since the captive hermie's are from those polluted areas where polluted parents bred in polluted water... well, whatever. It was just a crazy thought of mine while I was reading through it all.

Don't get me wrong here though, I do agree that many problems could come from the commercial foods with preservatives and additatives especially because of the examples from the dogs and cats being in contact with similiar preservatices and junk in their foods.

I totally agree that variety is always best though. My fish do not get 1 fish food. I purchase a variety of foods and mix them in a smaller container to feed. For Hamster and Bunny they are fed a nice mix of seeds, alfalfa, timothy hay, etc and "table scrapes" like yogurt, apples, graham crackers, cream cheese, etc. I consistently have hamsters with longer lives then they are claimed to have and are the sweetest little things. This is only our second bunny so couldn't tell you the effects on her yet... except she's happy!

Tonight my little hermie friends will be introduced to a little peanut butter, fresh carrot and something else.... can't remember right now but I've got it here somewhere. hehe... At any rate, I know Crumb will love it but I'm really trying to intice Buster to come up and eat. If he doesn't, I'm under the impression he's busy doing something that I need to watch closely. Figures, first crab... first to molt... ergh! I really hope not yet though... not ready!