New Owner, what to feed them?

[Ayume]

So I've had my little guys for not too long, about two days now and I'm concerned about their diet. I've done alot of research about what they like and can eat but they just don't seem to have an appetite. I've fed them pears, carrots, oats, a smallamount of peanutbutter and broccoli but the only thing they seem to have an appetite for is the oats. I want them to have a well balanced diet, but they seem to be pickier then I was led to belive.
Any help?

[emmac350]

Hi, Ayume, and welcome to HCP and crabbing! I'm glad you're looking for non-commercial foods to feed your crabs...you're several steps ahead of most new owners! That being said, there's a bunch of information especially in this forum (the Nutrition one) about what foods to feed crabs. Additionally, check out some of these sites for more information on what your crabs can and can't eat:

http://crabstreetjournal.com/xoops/modu ... storyid=48

http://crabstreetjournal.com/xoops/modu ... Zeaxanthin

http://www.epicurean-hermit.com/

http://hermitcrabcuisine.com/

[Ayume]

Thankyou, I've actually looked at most of these posts already, the probem seems to be getting them to eat. I know I can't force them but I'm worried they're going to starve.These guys are actually pretty picky eaters.

[emmac350]

They only eat what they need to eat nutrient-wise. So don't worry if they aren't eating the nutritious stuff you offer, some days they don't need to eat all of it. Some days they may only need some iron and, thus, may choose to eat only spinach or only red meat or something along those lines. The trick to get them to eat more often is to offer a variety of foods, and not repeat foods for about a week. This is hard when you're feeding them fresh foods as fresh foods go bad more quickly, but if you coordinate your foods with their foods (or freeze single-serving portions of their foods) it works out okay.

Try to feed a meat, fruit, veggie, and calcium at a minimum every day. Calcium could be cuttlebones (sold for birds) or eggshells or crushed shells (if some of your shells develop cracks or holes). Meats can be supplemented with dried ones that you can get at the pet store - jars of dried shrimp, plankton, krill, mealworms, bloodworms, tubifex worms, etc. are all safe. But do try to vary it up with fresh meat or fresh eggs too (if I have a recipe where I have to brush the top of, say, a pie with beaten egg, I add crab-safe foods like eggshells and dried shrimp and such to the rest of the egg and microwave it to make scrambled eggs, crumple it into small chunks and freeze it for feeding later). If you can, try to offer an algae or seaweed daily as these are very nutritious and foods that crabs find in their wild environment. You can buy spirulina powder at health food stores and pet stores have sheets of seaweed that you can tear up and give to your crabs (or that you can grind with a food processor and sprinkle on top of their food). My guys really love nuts too - I bought bags of the non-salted baking nuts (walnuts, pecans, macademia nuts, almonds etc.) and give them pieces of them in their food bowl. Walnuts seem to go missing the most often. The tiny bags of those nuts will last forever too because they only need a piece of a single nut each time they get one, and there are a lot of nuts in those packs.

[Ayume]

Thankyou for that advice, it helped quite a bit. I was just concerned about their eating habbits. I just put in a few things for them to eat and noticed when I came back that the walnuts and dried strawberry vanished. A very satisfied little Kyuubi scuttled away with a bit in his pincers.
Unfortnatelly he's the only one I've caught eating so far. No problems with variety here, with 4 kids in the house shopping happens pretty frequently.

[Ayume]

So two days ago I bought my first 3 little hermits. One of them is a lovely almost black, dark purple shade. Gorgeous! And the other was a light tan with black splotches on his bright red legs, and the last was also tan when I bought her with a spot on her main body but in the last 2 days she has begun to turn a dark purple too!
Any thoughts?

[ladybug15057]

Currently with the hermies being new they should not be disturbed but offered very nutritious foods. Emma has gone into great detail about diet and what should be offered. With these nutrients you should notice a coloring difference with their next molt. Meanwhile, please do permit them to destress per the PPS (post purchase stress) article.

http://crabstreetjournal.com/xoops/modu ... toryid=165

[llmercll]

I'm going to buy some food from, most likely, the hermitcrabaddictiion store.

Can anyone recommend me some good, nutritious crab food that will last awhile? I'm currently looking at this page.

http://www.hermitcrabaddictionstore.com ... ESSENTIALS

Should one of those be sufficient?
I'm also looking at this

http://www.hermitcrabaddictionstore.com ... /ADDICTION

But kind of turned off by the refrigeration, and shrimp looking things. I guess that's important protein though.

[ladybug15057]

Above there are a couple links to some good food information. In the upper right corner of the screen that has a search box and if "Nutritious food" is type in it pulls up loads of other foods. (try to stay within the past 1 1/2 - 2 years of posting due to updates)

[emmac350]

The ultimate smörgåsbord and nutrition beginnings are pretty good to get. I will say that you don't need to use purchased food depending on what you prepare for yourself. Some of the stuff (dried shrimp, bugs, krill, plankton, etc.) can be purchased in jars that will last forever at the pet store (only ingredients can be whatever is in the jar - i.e. shrimp only or bloodworms only). Bags of unsalted bakers' nuts will last forever. A cuttlebone or an eggshell will last at least a few weeks, and most of us have at least a little variety of fruits and vegetables that we can share with the crabs. If you don't want to try to do fresh, then dried is fantastic - it's what I used mostly with my crabs. Sometimes I'd microwave-cook some long grain organic rice with little bits of chicken or beef in it, and keep it in the fridge. 1/4 cup of dried rice would last a full week and then some, and I'd add fresh fruit and veggies to this mixture along with some dried stuff.