Zeaxanthin

[ladybug15057]

Depends, do you want live meal worms or freeze dried?
Most places who sell reptiles will carry the live.
As for freeze dried, I have found them at WalMart, Petco, and PetSmart as well as some mom and pop pet stores. Some pet stores also have them in the freezer section with their frozen silversides and such..

[CrabbyJo]

I'd like live, as they will have the oils mentioned in Julia Crab's post, and I just prefer fresh anything over freeze dried if I have a choice. I could do freeze dried shrimp, but prefer to buy it, steam it, and grind it up for the little guys. Except I think I'll have to get some for vacation food.

I read a recipe that uses live mealworms, baked and dried for the recipe. It's close to the ingredients I plan to use for my little mix too.

[emmac350]

My pet stores have mealworms live. I don't know where to get dried other than the Addiction store for now; I'll have to focus on getting more Zeaxanthin into my crabs' diet. I completely forgot about that site for food info.

[CrabbyJo]

I appreciate this thread being revived, I had no idea about the xeaxanthin and the sources that were better than the veggies and such. I appreciate her stating it in a way that gets your attention to let you know they MUST have this stuff.
perhaps this is a large part of why many hermits die after surviving a couple years, I'm going to guess malnutrition is the larger factor (this was mentioned in another thread today).

[kgbenson]

Researchers and commercial hatchery folks use things like the following:

Red Phaffia Yeast: approximately 1% astaxanthin.
The microalgae Haematococcus pluvialis (you can buy this as Naturose at Brine Shrimp Direct)
Spirulina: Has >1500 ppm careotenoids (the different kinds vary)
Copepods: Some of the arctic species have buckets of carotenoids, the stuff from Brine Shrimp Direct is analyzed as: Proximate Analysis: Protein, 65%; Fat, 9%; Ash, 12%; Chitin, 3%; Salt (NaCl), 9.5%; Astaxanthin, 400 ppm.
Cyclopeez: Lots of Astaxanthin. I mean LOTS: http://www.cyclop-eeze.com/product_info ... e10_T2.jpg

There are a number of products that people who have been rearing shrimp and lobsters use that could be very beneficial to crabbers. OF course some are hard to get in quantities of less than a 55 gallon barrel!

Google is your friend here. Brine shrimp direct is one of those companies that are favored by many folks in public aquaria, as is the Argent company. Be careful though, every guy with some red powder seems to want to be on the Astaxanthine bandwagon.

Keith

[CrabbyJo]

Thank you Keith. It looks as though the cyclop-eeze is easy to obtain at pretty reasonable prices. Looks like something worth adding to my stash of hermit crab foods that I can feel very good about feeding.

[kgbenson]

You should be able to get it at most decent fish stores.

Keith

[hermiesman80]

Does anyone know where you can get freeze-dried plankton cuz my hermit crab won`t eat without it in his food,He is aparently a picky eater even though hermies aren`t supposed to be picky.

[Gizaroo]

Does anyone know where you can get freeze-dried plankton cuz my hermit crab won`t eat without it in his food,He is aparently a picky eater even though hermies aren`t supposed to be picky.

Hermies can be very picky! Lol...so won't eat the same foods for up to 2 weeks at a time (if I remember what I read on here somewhere correctly)! I got freeze dried plankton at one of my petstores- Pet Supplies Plus.

[hermiesman80]

Ok thanks