Keep on Crabbin' is a new store to help promote the importance of a healthy, varied, and non-commercial diet in the life of your crabs. The store offers various dry foods in individual packets for you to choose from or they offer pre-made mixes as well. The purpose behind the mixes is to help a newer crabber learn the importance of a healthy diet for their crabs by offering most of the essentials needed in a crabs diet to be met throughout the rotation of the packets. For example one pack might contain worm castings, shrimp, green pepper, and apple and the next packet might be kiwi, coconut, hamburger, rose petals, and a third packet would be steak, carrot, blueberries, egg shells just as an example. So if they are rotated correctly meaning serve pack 1, or part of it, for one or two days, then rotate to pack 2, then pack 3 and so on the crabs will get a varied diet and the crabber can kind of get an idea of some of their crabs favorite food. The second purpose behind the mixes are for more established crabbers that might be going on vacation and don’t want to have to worry about a pet sitter messing something up, or for those nights when they are just too tired to prepare a meal for their crabs, they can just pop in a packet already made and do some quick housekeeping and have one less thing to worry about.
The individual food packs are there so people can choose what they would like to feed their crabs and in some cases letting them try something new or not commonly available to them.
The store is run by a dedicated and established crabber that knows how daunting it can be to learn the importance of a diet in the life of a crab. So if you are looking to try something new for your crabs or you are a new crabber still feeding your crabs a commercial diet then I encourage you to look here:
And as always Keep On Crabbin’!!!
Are you sure? land hermit crabs are nocturnal, which means they are active at night while we are sleeping. Hermit crabs are small creatures who eat and drink in small amounts. To be really sure your hermit crab is not eating try this: Smooth out the sand or substrate all around the food and water dish during the day. The next morning check the tank and see if there are any tracks around the dishes. If you see hermie tracks you know your crab was eating while you were sleeping. If you try this for several days and see no tracks, then your crab may not be moving at all. This could be a sign of a molt or possibly a death. Try moving the dishes closer to the crab just in case its too weak to reach them on its own.
If your water is disappearing every night, make sure there is no sand spilling in to the dish. Sand will act like a sponge and draw all the water out of the dish and into the surrounding sand. Often people mistake this for a crab that is drinking huge amounts of water every night. If your water dish is over your UTH, the water may be evaporating.
So of the 12 crabs I purchased, only 6 remain after a month. I moved them to the main tank this week. Not great odds but not much different than purchasing from a local store either. They never did seem to eat very enthusiastically so maybe that will change now that they are in the larger tank.
Sadly FOUR have died. A ruggie died on the 2nd or 3rd day and tonight 3 more have died. Very frustrating but not that unusual. I haven't purchased crabs in such a long time and this part is hard. I'll be lucky if I'm left with even half when its all said and done. I wanted to take some pics of the viola out of its shell like I have done in the past but its too late and I don't have the patience for handling a smelly lifeless crab tonight.
I finally got home and set up a salt water pool for the crabs to soak in. Matt had given them a dish of fresh water when he put them in the tank earlier. I had a feeling they would want a good soak. One of the violas is a PP so I'm contacting the seller to see about getting some sort of swap or refund. They are all so pretty but I really do love the Ruggies more than any other species over all. All of them I have owned have been gentle and calm little crabs.
Anyway I placed them all in this tray and then sat it on top of my bar with the cage around it. After about 30 minutes I went to check on them. Everyone was still enjoying the water, save one Indo who got out and went under to hide. I moved him back to the top of the tray to see if he would go back in the water on his own.
I left them soaking for another 30 minutes. When I checked them again, they were all still in the ocean water except that one lone Indo. At this point I decided to move the entire tray to the tank even though it will take up a lot of floor space. They will have to cope with that at least over night as the ocean water is more important than floor space at the moment.
