Using Reptile multivitamin in food mixture?

[Cydonia1]

So I've made my own sort of "staple" food to add in to the feedings with fresh/dried foods and when I get sick. the ingredients to my current food are:
Apples, Mango, Strawberries, Butternut squash, Bell peppers, Pineapples, Pears, Shrimp, Bannana, Blood worms, Seaweed

I plan on adding some hibiscus for sure, we have our own plant, and maybe some collards/kale and anything else you guys think of.

But onto the real question.

I have a bearded dragon the has Repcal Multivitamin with beta carotene. I got a small scooper from a food purchase, so I put a small amount (much less that half a scoop, it barely covered the bottom of the scooper) in the food mix, along with half a scoop of calcium with d3 int ofood mix. I can't find the whole list of ingredients on any website, but I found half of one. I could try to type up the entire list off the back though.

What I'm wondering, is this safe? None of them appear to have any issues, no ones dead yet, and they're all popping back up and going back down with no decrease in crab numbers (it's around 7-5 right now, the e's like to stay under) I didn't want to do too much of it, but I wanted to see if it could help with making the diet balanced. And by no means would I call this an "experiment", because there's no way for me to tell if they're actually eating and of the food, how much of it, which crab does what after eat it ect ect ect.

this is the ingredient list i could find
per kg: Vitamin E 5500 IU; Choline 440mg; Niacin 3300mg; Inositol 2530mg; Asorbit Acid (vit C) 2200mg; Thiamin (Vitb1) 1100mg; Riboflavin (vit B2) 550mg; Beta Carotene (safe form of Vit A) 440mg; d-pantothenic Acid 330mg; Folic Acid 33mg; menadione 22mg; Vitamin B12 4mg; Biotin .44mg; Various Amino Acids; Calcium 22000mg; Phosphorus 11000mg; Salt 1320mg; Magnesium 99mg; Potassium 1650mg; Sulfur 5500mg; Copper 165ppm; Iodine 38ppm; Iron 3850ppm; Maganese 330ppm; Zinc 330ppm.

( The Thiamin is NOT whats present in goldfish that makes them horrible feeders btw, thats Thiaminase)

[soilentgringa]

I am going to say no to the multivitamin.

Your crabs should be getting plenty of nutrients from a varied diet and some of the ingredients in the vitamin may be toxic to lhc's.

I am trying to find the list of toxic metals, etc but am having trouble so if someone else can find it for me that would be great.

[hermitcrab101]

I suppose it's technically safe, although some brands have copper sulfate in it yours seems not to. There doesn't really seem a need for it, like soilentgringa said your crab should already be getting all his needed vitamins from his food.

[wodesorel]

The problem is we don't know what toxic levels are for hermits for any of those vitamins, and since hermits are so small it's easy to overdose them when using a product for an animal several hundreds to thousands of times its mass. (ANY animal can get poisoned from too much vitamins.)

However, a very tiny well mixed amount may prove to helpful. Vitamin levels start to tank in food the moment they're picked, and also decrease over time with dried foods. It's likely that our hermits do experience shortages in certain vitamins, but knowing which ones or by how much is impossible.

It's the wild wild west in terms of research.

[Crabber85]

I'm also going to have to go no on this one, already been down this road a while ago when I was keeping an anole and the powder was largely useless for my hermitcrabs because the type of calcium that most if not all reptile powders use is not the right type and so isn't easily absorbed by them if at all.

The same goes for the other vitamins in the mix hermitcrabs aren't really capable of absorbing too many of the synthetic vitamins which is what most reptile powders use because they are cheaper on the manufacturer to make and add to the mixes.

If you want to offer easily digestible real vitamins and minerals your best bet is to use fresh fruits and veggies with some powdered cuttle-bone or white calci-sand mixed in to really boost the calcium levels.

I have a little bottle of powdered cuttle-bone that has some calci-sand and crushed eggshells mixed in it that I sprinkle on top of what ever food I'm serving to my group and they seem to really love it and it gives them their calcium three different ways.