Sea Salt

[babesbarn]

I use Ocean Marine Sea Salt to instantly make salt water for my hermies to drink. I wait a day or so until it cures. Can I spinkle this on the food too? Also I have Table Sea Salt and wonder if I could sprinkle that on their food too but not make water with it.
Where can I find seaweed? Does anyone know? Thanks alot.

[CrabbyJo]

If you are sure to offer the ocean salt water and keep it fresh, there's no need to sprinkle it on their food. They would do better with crushed cuttlebone or spirulina sprinkled on their food.

Sometimes you can find spirulina in a natural food store or in the natural food section of your grocery store, in bulk bins or containers where the bulk spices are sold. Mine has stopped carrying the spirulina, and I refuse to buy an expensive bottle of caplets meant for human consumption! In bulk, the price is almost nonexistent. You may also find kelp granules available there as well. Kelp can be served wet - sometimes I mix it with some dechlor water, or even some olive oil, as they seem to avoid it when it's dry. The spirulina is another matter - it dries up hard if you wet it, so I sprinkle it over foods.
You can pick up seaweed at the pet store in the fish food section. There are sheets of it you can crumble up in a blender and store in the fridge (as Marie does) to sprinkle in their food. This is sometimes labeled as algae - red, brown, and green. You can purchase it on line as well - Marie uses Three Little Fishies brand.

You can also order seaweed mixes online from places like Keep on Crabbin'. This is owned by a member of this forum (Spidtat) who makes all organic mixes, so you know your crab's food is safe. he also sells some of the items from Crabotanicals. I highly recommend them for their healthy mixes, especially for foods you can't find easily, or it would cost a lot for you to mix your own by buying all the ingredients.

[ladybug15057]

To encourage some hermies to eat certain foods some crabbers do use their ocean/sea mix to season it. They also use it on popcorn... but please no human grade sea salts or such.

I buy the Julian Sprungs seaweed, (Two little fishies) they have 3 varieties and our hermies like them all. Once I grind the sheets up I keep them stored in an air tight bottle under my sink with the rest of their foods in a plastic shoe box type container. Too keep it fresh too, I will do maybe 1/3 of a bag at a time, and make sure all the air is out of the store bought bag and use a twisty tie to close the bag. (as well as the zip that comes on the bag. I have found our hermies like this brand better,
http://www.twolittlefishies.com/tlf_prod_foods.html
it is slightly moist where as the other sheets of seaweed in the clear plastic containers are very dry and brittle with hardly any odor to them.

http://www.fosterandsmithaquatics.com/p ... catid=5026
For spirulina I use the Hikari freeze dried Brine Shrimp and Spirulina. I do not mix it with anything just serve as is. (after grinding and I store it in the container under our sink.)
http://www.petsmart.com/product/index.j ... Id=3302158

Edited to add: I bought a food dehydrator a few months ago to dehydrate many of my own foods for our hermies, and it has already paid for itself twice!

[babesbarn]

Thanks so much for the great insight on where and what for Hermies. How about the flakes, are they any good? And I see that garlic is now added to that one brand and I heard garlic is a no no. So about the seaweed, I have a ten gallon tank and I can chop it but no blender so how about if I go with flakes for now. Do they like that? Also I have been giving my hermies the freeze dried shrimp and I never see any action on that. But the baked sweet potatoe got lots of hits. Thanks for the links will also check out Petsmart for the Spirulina baine shrimp as I thought I was giving the right one. NO complaints from the crabbies. They even come out during the day to check out the light and hang on the side of the basket in the tank. Tonight I just threw in a unsalted and unbuttered popcorn and I showed my sister my hermies and Jumbo was up on the fake cactus and there was a tiny piece of popcorn left. I remarked how one crab could consume as big a piece of popcorn as the one I put in. So I put another for his friends because they will want one too. First come, gets it all...lols. Also they got a nice oak leaf soaked and washed in Ocean Marine Sea Water, carrot, romaine lettuce, and some health bread. They love that bread Ezekiel raisin bread from the healthfood section of the store. Well Thanks again and wish you all a Big Happy Holiday from my Hermies to you and yours.