If you love your hermit crab so much, chances are you will be spoiling them with yummy food. Forget those generic hermit crab foods that you can buy in pet stores!
You’re not just going to spoil them with food but also give them healthy and toxic free alternatives!
Note that in spoiling them, you will be the one doing the preparations for it. Yes it will require your effort to prepare them but don’t worry these methods are pretty straightforward and easy to follow.
Now let’s go!
Easy Step #1: A mix of healthy foods
Head to your local grocery store and check for food that’s allowed for hermit crabs such as:
- Nuts: Walnuts or almonds, also assure that these nuts are unsalted
- Grains & Seeds: oats, bran rice, sesame seeds, or chia seeds
- Unprocessed Dried fruits: mangoes, berries, raisins
- Healthy crackers as well, just be sure this has very little salt and does not contain onion flavoring
Most of these foods are common in your kitchen and available in most groceries so you won’t be having a hard time finding and obtaining these foods. Also, no need to buy a lot! Buy in bulk if you’re caring for a lot of hermit crabs but if you’re just caring for a hermit crab or two then just buy enough for them.
Easy Step #2: Get your ingredients and tools for mixing
So here are the ingredients that you can use:
- An appropriate amount of nuts, grains, crackers, and dried fruits you bought from the groceries.
- Calcium powder (can be bought in pet shops)
- Optional: If you have a garden or access to a garden, you may add dried crickets or land bugs. If you don’t have access to those, small dried shrimps will do as well.
So for the tools you needed to prepare for mixing:
- Plastic tubs or bags with the capacity of 1 cup or less.
- Mixing bowl and spoon – if you’re adding bugs then obviously don’t use the ones you use for your own food preparation!
- Knife and cutting board – for chopping the food into little pieces
- Mortar and pestle – crucial if you’re planning to grind your food and caring for small hermit crabs.
- Desiccant packets or silica gel packets – you can use this to keep the food nice, fresh and avoiding moisture.
Easy Step #3: Start Preparing, Chopping, and Mixing (optional)!
- Chop those dried fruits, nuts, grains into smaller pieces. But of course the cut size should really depend on the size of your hermit crabs.
- Use a pinch and spread evenly the calcium powder of the chopped food, calcium powder can be pretty handy especially for dried fruits since they can become sticky after chopping. You can use it to separate them.
- Avoid clutter and work clean! Chop each ingredient separately or it really depends on you really if you want your hermit crabs to chopped/grinded dried fruit with dried shrimps/bugs.
- Optional: As stated from the previous step, it depends on you if you want to mix all of the food together in a mixing bowl but if you do, then choose the ingredients you want to mix.
In our end, we suggest that you add 3 to 5 ingredients for each food mix you will make. And for each mix it should include the following: grain, protein, fat from seeds or nuts, and of course calcium which will be beneficial for their body.
Dried fruit is added as a bonus only and note to use only a considerable amount in food mixing.
Easy Step #4: Pack it Fresh and Ready to Serve
- After mixing (or not) the food you just chopped/grinded then put it in a food container or a plastic bag. Make sure to remove any air inside the containers.
- Make use of the desiccant or silica gel packet, you can mix it with their food. Be it in the food container or plastic bag. Just make sure it’s not damaged and some of the gel might mix with their food. So have a watchful eye on that.
- You may use a regular spoon or teaspoon if you’re just feeding a few hermit crabs to put the food in their food bowl.
- Be sure to place the food at room temperature and avoid any sunlight or excessive heat to avoid spoiling the food. Assure as well that the containers and plastic bags are properly sealed because you don’t want ants or cockroaches to infest it.
We would also suggest that you rotate their food as well! Pretty sure just like us humans, your hermit crabs will appreciate eating different kinds of meal every day!