Interesting food hermies go CHIRP for!!

Hannah · Post by **Hannah** » 10 Nov 2004, 12:54

Hermies love many different foods, and their most important factor for food is healthyness. You don't have to just feed them hermit crab food, make your hermies happy!! Would you like to be fed the same food for the rest of your life? Petstores might tell you only to feed them hermie food, but they are wrong, they just want to make money off of you. Hermies crave variety just like you and me! Here is a list of foods;
Oh, and make sure not to give your hermies anything with butter, salt, or any sauce of any kind!
Meat
*Shrimp (yummy and full of carotene for that bright red healthy color!!)
*Shrimp tail (hermies like it and it provides lots of calcium)
*Hermie-safe meatloaf (hermies love it and it is full of healthy stuff) *Scroll down to bottom for recipe.
*Chicken
*Fish
*Seafood

Veggies (what more can I say, veggies are healthy!!)
*Corn (full of carotene)
*Carrots (full of carotene)
*Celery
*Cucumber
*Broccoli
*Lettuce
*Romaine Lettuce
*Spinach

Fruits
*Watermelon
*Blueberries (have never seen hermies flip out more over these)
*Tomatoes (carotene)
*Apples
*Bananas
*Grapes
*Cherries
*Mango
*Papaya (none of those seedy black things)
*Oranges
*Pineapples
*Pomegranite

Cereals
*Cap'n Crunch
*Cheerios
*Lucky Charms (no marshmellows)

Miscellanious
*Cat Food (yup, hermies LOVE it!!)
*Eggs (cooked)

Specifically for health
*Cuttlebone (flavored or unflavored, they like strawberry and pineapple)
*Christa's hermie food recipe (go to http://www.hermit-crabs.com/food.html )

Hannah · Post by **Hannah** » 10 Nov 2004, 12:59

(I ran out of room!!!)

Recipe for hermie meatloaf:
Ground Hamburger
Egg
Tomatoes (optional)
Mix everything together until is is a goopy mess, then put it in a NON-METAL pan in the oven until fully cooked, temperatures may vary. Hermies love it!!!!

NEVER EVER give hermies food from a can, they are very sensitive to metal and could get sick if they ate anything that is canned!!!!
I will post more foods when I can think of them and/or feel like it!!!
I hope this was helpful!

Post by **Carrie** » 10 Nov 2004, 18:54

Mine love grapes, and they get cranberry sauce for the holidays. They also love pierogi, a Polish food involving noodles made from flour and water, filled with potato and onion, fried in a touch of butter and salt (they seem to like the butter version better). This was the one time every crab ran to the food dish--back then there were about 15 crabs. They like egg noodles as well--seems to be the flour... And mashed potatos/baked potatos. I tried pancakes on them the other day--very high in calcium.

I just learned about the cat food recently... used at the pet shop where people actually know something about hermit crabs, Bugs-n-Stuff.

FMR Treat--they loved it, but it seems to be discontinued.

Tetra BabyShrimp: like potato chips to them, and it's the same thing as eating exo all the time (my crabs have never been into the other shrimp alternatives already mentioned). These are freeze-dried.

They also like bread every now and then, esp. right after a molt. It's soft...

And sometimes a bit of roast beef from Arby's.

Kali Sharai (a.k.a. 'name in debate')

ayianna · Post by **ayianna** » 10 Nov 2004, 19:15

My goodness, no, FMR treat is NOT discontinued. Perhaps where you are buying things, it has been removed from their stock...

Check for it online, it's all over ^_^

Hannah · Post by **Hannah** » 11 Nov 2004, 12:20

I used to use Tetra Founa baby shrimp, but the hermies didn't like it. Are you sure that the butter is okay for them? It is a dairy product and high in fat.

Post by **Carrie** » 13 Nov 2004, 20:32

I don't know if butter is good or bad. I tried noodles unbuttered but they didn't even eat any. A little butter seems to attract them... but I use way more butter on my food than they ever get, believe me. And I watched them eat when they first got noodles w/ a touch of butter, and they are pulling layers off way beyond the bit of butter dribbled on top. It's kind of an attention getter... but don't use it if you don't want to, of course, as with anything. I DO know I will never let them near sugar cookies ever again. Sometimes what they seem to like isn't best for them, as with we people.

I will look online for that FMR treat, thanks, Aiyanna... maybe it's just where I live, b/c it seems to be all the pet shops locally. I have to order heat lamp bulbs, and they probably have it at petdiscounters.com.

I wonder why some groups of crabs seem to respond well to one thing and others don't? Some say their crabs absolutely love peanut butter, but mine won't touch it. Popcorn? Same thing. Lightly buttered pierogi and/or noodles? Well... They also like pancakes (again, low butter, but just a little). These have a lot of calcium in them. I wonder if there's a reason my crabs are high-carb eaters?

Kali IV loved the baby shrimp more than any crab. Huge III was a high-carb eater. I had them for over 3 years... Saturn (5 years) and Little Guy II (4 1/2 years) don't even seem to stop to eat at all, but I know they must. They seem to like fruits the most.

Part of why I want that FMR Treat is b/c it's something made just for them, w/ the good nutrients, and they seem to love it so much. The last batch of it--down to a very small pile, is going to Arwen-Kali (AK) who loves it, when I get her out, as a sort of taming-treat.

Anyone know why mine like potatos and noodles and a bit of butter and high-carb sorts of things? Maybe it's a nutritional deficit of some sort. I'm looking to save my jumbos, who have so much trouble molting (the furnace going out last winter for half a month didn't help the molting cycles... but those were also the crabs who mostly liked this stuff and didn't show any interest in anything but these foods and grapes... but all of mine like grapes.)

Thanks - Kali Sharai

Hannah · Post by **Hannah** » 15 Nov 2004, 10:08

Okay then, maybe a little butter wouldn't hurt them. I just gave mine some honey and they ate it up!!! They seem to like the naturally sugary foods, don't you agree? Have you tried beans with them? I don't know if they are safe, but I tried it anyway, they didnt really touch it. I bet hermies would love egg noodles!

Post by **Carrie** » 15 Nov 2004, 18:46

They do love egg noodles! That's the quickest noodle to give them, actually. The pierogi were homemade. Believe me, I don't overload them w/ butter--the smell attracts them, and then they eat the food there.

They like homemade noodles better, but they'll eat the storebought ones too.

Honey is good... natural sugar. They will very easily become addicted to things like sugar cookies and cake. One crab once snuck some ice cream off of a lid--it was next to me as I ate out of the container (bad, bad me...) and I was yelling, "Nooo!! Dairy products!!!!" and trying to pry her off. She held on so tight I was afraid I'd actually hurt her if I kept tugging, and my efforts only made her eat faster... so she won. And she was just fine. (I was worried!) They are not allowed ice cream anyway, even if they DO like it. I give them human desserts like the sugar cookie bit or little bit of cake only during the holidays... Thanksgiving day and Christmas day, maybe a bit of my birthday cake to share. Even then I give them cranberry sauce first so they're not too hungry when they get their dessert.

Anyone know that their mouthparts contain tasting sensors... and they run on automatic. So if you have a sick or pre-molt crab (usually the same thing as they don't seem to get sick, just pre-molt) if you feed it honey on a toothpick, it automatically has to eat it if you hold it up to touch the mouthparts. This will provide needed energy for a molt. (So will a drink of Gatorade.) I learned this from Kathy at FMR.

They also like cooked rice w/ a bit of Soy Sauce on it... I have a picture somewhere of about 5 crabs very happily sitting on a plate of rice and eating.

They like chicken wings, too, even with the barbecue sauce. One crab was only eating the barbecue sauce, so that was something I had to discontinue. But if I eat chicken, I always save a little meat on the bone and put it into the food dish for them.

Kind of like kids... you can't let them only eat the food they LIKE. If they get too into it they might even stop eating the nutritious foods, preferring sugar cookies and barbecue sauce. Which is why exposure is very rare to such things.

Hopefully no one has the idea that I lay on a lot of butter to their food. I don't. It's more of a scent attractant than a flavoring. A little melted butter draws them out to the food.

Well, I think I need something to eat. I wonder why...

Kali Sharai

Hannah · Post by **Hannah** » 17 Nov 2004, 15:20

Yeah, when I gave them the honey, it sort of turned liquid by the next morning!! Weird, huh? Maybe it's the humidity.

Post by **Carrie** » 17 Nov 2004, 18:21

I don't know... I always just gave it to them on a toothpick when they needed extra energy... I do know that peanut butter is a heck of a thing to try to clean out of a food dish.

I've discovered (not to difficult to discover this one) that "tricky" foods can be put over a nice layer of disposable Saran-wrap/cellophane, and then you can just remove that w/o having to actually wash the food dish out. (Learned from that holiday cranberry sauce I give them.) That way if you have their regular food in there (something commercial, usually, or baby shrimp) you don't have to toss it along with the leftovers.

There is a piece of pancake currently in Big House I. (I have 2 tanks). I thought I'd gotten it all but they hid one on me and are still eating it.

I found a picture of about 5 crabs gathering around the slightly buttered pierogi. I'd never seen anything like it before--such a response! Huge III has the actual pierogi piece and the others are gathering around as if waiting in line: West Nile (named so I could say I had West Nile), the AuraCrab, and a few others. Huge III was always protective of her food. She also loved fresh green spring oak leaves. (That reminds me--I need to put in some more brown oak leaves.) You can hear them eating these at night--gentle tearing sounds--quite relaxing. Carol of Crabworks gives her crabs these and mine love them, too. I've even got one pet shop to put oak leaves and bark in w/ their crabs at the store. Crabs also like to hide under the leaves.

And there is also a picture of about 5 crabs from the mid-90s clustered around a chicken drumstick, eating happinly the remnants of meat I'd left for them.

Interesting food hermies go CHIRP for!!

Interesting food hermies go CHIRP for!!

Noodles and oak leaves and honey...