The first magazine for land hermit crab enthusiasts!

May 2007 Volume II Issue 5

Photo by JoeyO

In this issue

April winners

Crabotanicals

Food Trials

Member interview

Name: Sarah Peale

Dimensions of Crabitat: 30x12x18

Volume of Crabitat: 29 Gallon

Description of Substrate: Playsand

Description of Tank Items: 2 Cocohuts, freshwater

pond, bubbling saltwater pool, corner net, 3

'second' levels, 2 driftwood, 1 shell changing area,

vines, moss area

Sarah won 200 CSJ dollars to spend on

prizes!

April 2007 Winner: Sarah Peale April 2007 Winner: Snowbordgrl

Snowbordgrl won 200 CSJ dollars to spend on

prizes!

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Member interview Member id: emoliver

When did you buy your first hermit crab?

I didn't buy them, I got three of them for free off of Craig's List on April 3rd of this year.

Why?

I had hermit crabs as a little girl and had loved them. I had wanted my children to grow up around them too so when my oldest son started telling me that that is what he had asked the Easter Bunny to bring him for Easter it seemed like a great idea. Then we ended up babysitting a couple of hermit crabs for a friend of ours while they were on vacation and that did our family in... we just knew we had to have some of our own.

What was your first tank set up like?

It was a 10 gallon glass aquarium with sand, a hiding cave, plants, salt and fresh water dishes, shells and a coconut fiber mat on the back to climb up.

Why did you join a hc forum?

Because I found there was a lot I didn't remember or know about having hermit crabs and this site seemed to help me learn so much.

What holds your interest in hcs?

I just keep learning more all the time.

What is your tank like now?

It's a 55 gallon aquarium with lots and lots of stuff to climb on, tons of shells, just a great set up.

Do you remember your first molt?

Yes, I feel like I was a ball of nerves... I kept worrying everyday that something might be wrong with him. Then he turned out to be just fine.

What do you find the most frustrating about keeping hermit crabs as pets?

I can never seem to have enough... I just started looking at going up to a 120 gallon tank! My husband just rolls his eyes at me.

Where is your favorite place to shop for hermit crab items?

Locally I like Micheals, but online I like here

http://www.hermitcrabaddictionstore.com/

I received this as a gift from another crabber, Aurelia, who lives in France. This is one of the coolest gifts I've received to date. This is a no muss, no fuss way to sow any type of seed to grow fresh sprouts for your hermit crabs. No soil required and you can sow a few seeds of one type or mix your seeds. It's so easy to do!

From the site: * Quick and Easy to handle. * Just place the seeds in the sieve and grow. * Seeds can be simply rinsed on the side of the kitchen sink and the sprouter (not the sieve) is also dishwasher safe to a tem perature of approx. 85C. * Includes an instruction booklet.

bioSnacky KEIMLI Mini Germinator

Suitable for sprouting all seeds and grains. Easy to Use: Requires no soil or sowing - just place the seeds in the sieve and water twice daily!

*Easy to use * Simple to clean * Scratch and shock resistant * UV resistant * Made from eco-friendly food safe glass acrylic * Contains no cadmium or formaldehyde * Rotund, transparent seed trays with ventilation slats ensure opti mum light incidence and air circulation (flow of oxygen) * An irrigation system that’s been tried and tested a hundred times over * Dishwasher safe to a temp. of approx. 85°C (place in upper rack of dishwasher only)

Have your own low maintenance mini vegetable garden on tap in your kitchen. * A good source of nutritional supplements, full of live enzymes * Sprouts are a nutritionally excellent food. They can contain 400% more protein than lettuce and over 3900% more beta-carotene; they provide a daily source of vitamins, proteins, minerals, trace elements and enzyme; , broccoli seeds contain high amounts of cancer fighting compounds! * For daily fresh sprouts, grown naturally * Simple and easy to use * Shoots are ready for harvest within a matter of days, depending on the seed variety

Product Review bioSnacky Mini Germinator

Tools—kitchen & food

Submittted by Daethian

Extreme Food Trials By Jedi_sena

(as published on

http://hermitcrabfoodtrials.blogspot.com)

Sometimes our curiosity about finding new sources of food for hermit crabs may take us down a dangerous road. For instance, hermit crabs have been observed eating a great many disgusting things from the wild. Being scavengers, they are attracted to items that could be hazardous for hu-mans to handle including carion and excrement. How far should a crab-keeper go in search of variety?

Carion.

Crabs will eat dead meat in all stages of decomposition without risk of illness it seems. However, one must weigh that against the risk to human keepers who can become fa-tally ill after handling rotten meats. Whenever handling raw meat, please wash your hands. For the sake of your house-hold’s human inhabitants, please avoid feeding decomposed flesh due to the smell, high bacterial content, and for fear of attracting bugs.

Pooh.

People have witnessed wild hermit crabs eating turtle pooh. One experienced crab keeper has been feeding them pooh from her guinea pig for years without adverse affects. Here are some guidelines for those of you conducting your own extreme food trials. Please exclude pooh from carnivores and omnivores from your pet’s diet. The digestive systems of these sort of animals digest so thoroughly that there is very little usable nutrients remaining in the waste. Herbi-vores however have inefficient digestive system so what comes out looks very much like the food they ate—evidence that there is more there than waste alone. The waste of rab-bits, cows, deer, elk, moose, horse, elephant, turtle, etc. may come to have merit.

Photographer: Crabby_Angel

Species of Crab/s: C. clypeatus

Comment: Beans after his first moult with me.

Photographer: Stacy Griffith

Species of Crab/s: C. violascens

See more incredible photos of shed exoskele-

tons online in our photo gallery encyclopedia.

http://www.crabstreetjournal.com/photos/

entrants/thumbnails.php?album=32

Register and you can submit your photos too! Say no to painted shells!

Crabotanicals Interview with Jedi_sena

What is your background in botanicals ?

My cousin and I are avid outdoorswomen and we have always enjoyed learning about local flora, buying books on edible native plants, and iden-tifying the species on our horseback rides and nature walks and we dis-cuss our finds online.

How did this interest cross over to land hermit crab care?

Having much interest in natural herbs and healthy eating, I easily began to focus on possible sources of food for my pets when I got my first her-mit crabs in 2005.

How did you begin selecting ingredients?

I started in my own back yard where I have an apple tree and a Russian olive tree. Apples were on the safe food list so I began feeding these since I trusted that they were next-to-organic being certain that the backyard had not been sprayed w/ any pesticides or fertilized chemically. The apples were a hit, but the Russian olive tree did not appear on the safe list or the unsafe list. After getting instructions from the Epicurean Hermit web-site owner on con-ducting food trials, I proceeded with the Russian olive leaf trial which turned out to be a huge hit with my crabs and was deemed safe!

Washington collection site

Colorado collection site

How did you proceed from there?

I shared this new information with the crab-keeping community and their positive feedback encouraged me to begin more and more food trials on local Colorado plant-life which also proved successful. My cousin followed my findings with much inter-est and offered to collect some leaves and berries from a rural area near her home in Washington State. More food trials began--again with exciting results. Meanwhile I was attempting to assist a new crab owner who was frustrated that her crabs had not eaten any of the so-called “favorite” foods that she was offering. I felt that her crabs were craving something leafy and more like the diet they were accustomed to in the wild, so I suggested she pluck some dandelion leaves from the backyard. She was further frustrated by my advice because she was a city-dweller with no access to safe weeds.

Is that how your idea for Crabotanicals was developed?

At that moment I realized that I was at an unfair advantage. It was not enough to simply pass on information about these great natural food sources if the average per-son could not access them. That is how Crabotanicals was born!

What ingredients are in Crabotanicals?

Our mixes feature wild-harvested leaves, blossoms, bark, and more.

Where can we buy Crabotanicals?

Several products are now for sale at The Happy Hermit (eBay store) and coming soon to The Crabbage Patch.

What are your goals for the future of Crabotanicals?

Interest in our products and research is growing rapidly and we are getting a lot of positive feedback. My goal is to quit my job and crab full-time!

More information about the research behind Crabotanical products can be found here:

http://hermitcrabfoodtrials.blogspot.com

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Founder Vanessa Pike Russell

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