Oak Leaves

We can't take credit for this discovery. The crab-keeping community has been feeding oak leaves long before we began conducting food trials. But it is readily available and the hermit crabs like it just as well as maple leaves. In WA you find a variety known as Garry Oak and here in Colorado we find thickets of what we call "scrub oak." All oak varieties are considered to be safe and nutritious.

Swordfern

Swordfern (Polystichum munitum sometimes known as "western swordfern") is a hermit crab favorite! Every time the fronds are fed, my crabs devour every bit. No adverse affects. We are very anxious to harvest more of these and incorporate them into a dried food product for sale soon.
click here for swordfern slideshow

Showy Milkweed

We only had a brief experience with Showy Milkweed (Asclepias speciosa), but it was very encouraging. I brought a seed home in my camping gear that landed in my flower bed. I was curious about the weed that I normally see in the mountains that now grew voluntarily in my yard on the plains. It is known to be edible to humans and as it grew I realized that the bees, monarch butterflies, and aphids liked it very well. So, I allowed it to remain in existence long enough to conduct a food trial on the leaves. I took a single broad mature leaf and dried it. Two crabs devoured all but the thick center vein in one night. No adverse affects. I look forward to harvesting much more of this on my next camp trip and conducting further trials on the seeds, flowers, etc.
Showy milkweed grows rather abundantly across much of the USA. It contains a milky juice that is reported to contain natural latex, so it should be fed in moderate portions until more is known about how natural latex affects hermit crabs.

UPDATE 6/13/07: Today the milkweed had bloomed. So I picked a single flower off of the cluster of pink blooms and Tank grabbed it and hauled it into his hidey. A few minutes longer and Zamboni joined him. I checked again in about an hour to see who was eating it, but it is gone without a trace!

Extreme Food Trials

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 humans 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 fatally ill after handling rotten meats. Whenever handling raw meat, please wash your hands. For the sake of your household’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. We currently have no resources for conducting food trials on excrement, but would like to offer some guidelines for those of you conducting your own 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. Herbivores 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 rabbits, cows, deer, elk, moose, horse, elephant, turtle, etc. may come to have merrit.
If you should come to have success with these sort of experiments, please comment on them here so that our readers can have access to the info you have gathered.

Human Diet Unsuitable

Perhaps you’ve heard someone say “the crabs eat whatever you eat.” This is misleading. The fact is that humans have the worst diet of the animal kingdom. Humans only eat a tiny portion of the edible things the earth offers. From those, an even smaller portion is available in a single locale. Globalization is improving that aspect somewhat. The few healthy things we will eat get dressed up with salt, sugar, and preservatives for market. Then we store it in a can where it absorbs chemicals and heavy metals like tin and aluminum or cook it in a non-stick skillet that further poisons it. Even if we are not junkfood addicts, we do not consume a large enough variety of healthy foods to fully support the physical needs of our own bodies. Clearly, our dietary habits should not be passed onto our beloved pets. If you eat a healthy diet, it is perfectly acceptable to offer those foods to your crabs, but please do not confine them to what you think is a “wide variety,” because that viewpoint is too limited. The next time you shop for fresh produce, add up all of the items you see on the shelves and subtract out how many of the items you have EVER bought. You will be surprised at how many items you and your crabs have been missing out on—and those are just the human-grade items available in your corner of the world. Before they came into captivity, your crabs had the wide world to ramble in search of food. If you can say with pride, “my crabs are spoiled; they eat better than I do,” then you are on the right track!

Human Grade Foods

Human-grade foods are not the focus of the research being conducted on this site. However, they deserve an honorable mention because they are readily available to crab-keepers everywhere and hermit crabs like them as well as we humans do! Fruits, vegetables, grains, tubers, legumes, all contain important nutrients for crabs—even plants that crabs would not normally encounter in the wild. Fresh foods from your refrigerator or pantry should find their way into the crabitat daily as long as they can be found on the safe food list (see “MY FAVORITE LINKS” in the far right column------>). Since crabs are scavengers, they will even eat the parts you normally toss in the trash when preparing a salad or the celery that goes limp in the crisper. Bruised spots don’t bother them. Avoid feeding moldy items, but crabs relish rotten or rancid food.

When developing products I find it necessary to incorporate human-grade food items so that I can be sure there is sufficient calcium, protein, etc. in each mix. Reliable information on the nutritive properties of human-grade foods is widely available. A wonderful resource for finding everything you ever wanted to know about the make-up of a human grade food item can be found here: www.nutritiondata.com. Just type the item you’re curious about in the search box and you’ll find a wealth of information!

Pesticides

Hermit crabs are invertebrates and therefore react to pesticides in the same way that bugs do—they die. Even the fresh produce you have been feeding contains quite a bit of harmful chemicals. That is why so many crab-keepers are switching to organic diets for their crabs’ health. (Time to take up organic gardening, right?). Some of these absorb more, some absorb less. Bananas and iceberg lettuce are said to absorb a lot of pesticides. Crabs love ripe bananas but organic is better if you can afford it. If you spray you yard with chemical fertilizers and pesticides, then your soil is contaminated and so is your plantlife. Public parks and commercial buildings have beautiful trees and bushes, but are likely kept beautiful through the use of chemicals.

Some plants are naturally bug-resistant and this is also a concern. Natural latex is one substance that seems to keep away most (but not all bugs). Some plants develop oxalates (from oxalic acid) to protect its fruit from being eaten before the seeds are fully developed to ensure propagation. Many of the foods I will test have high amounts of latex or oxalic acid (oxalates).
There is an upside to knowing this. If you want to conduct a food trial of your own, then you might “pre-screen” the plant you have in mind by looking for bugs. If it is loaded with aphids or the leaves are full of holes (where bugs have eaten), then there is a good chance that it will be safe for your crab.

Mulberry Leaves

The hermit crab community has established that the fruit of a mulberry tree (mulberries) are safe. We conducted a food trial on mulberry tree leaves. The pre-screen determined that few insects eat the leaves. Mulberry leaves are a staple food for silk worms, but other insects are repelled by the natural latex coating the leaves. Well, we were determined to test it out as a food source despite the concern about latex. We found that the leaves are safe, and not as well-liked as many other items we've tried, but eaten nonetheless. We recommend feeding only small amounts occasionally until more is known about how latex is digested and it's affects on a hermit crab's physiology.

Flowering Trees

Springtime provides a brief opportunity for collecting blossoms from flowering trees. Only a few of these suggested items come from my own trials, but I thought I should write a bit about them since they are very well liked by hermit crabs and we only have a limited time to harvest (about 2 weeks). They can be fed fresh or frozen or dried for later use.

These are safe:
Crabapple blossoms --(favorite of hermit crabs--my guys will come out of hiding midday to gobble up the pink petals), smell like roses.
Linden Poplar blossoms --(white blossoms--one of my food trials)
Apple blossoms --(white, possibly pink, all varieties are safe)
Lilac --this is a shrub, not a tree, w/ pale purple blossoms (some are pink or white), very fragrant.
Tilia (or Basswood are small and fragrant).
Silk Tree (hot pink hairlike clusters).

These are questionable:
Foresythia (bright yellow) probably safe, but my crew weren't interested.
Russian Olive Tree (yellow, very fragrant) probably safe, but my crew weren't interested.

I will add to this post because I know there are a lot more that I'll think of later.

Product: Russian Olive Bouquet

We have developed some new products that integrate some of our safe food trial items.

Russian Olive Bouquet -contains Russian Olive leaves, pineapple, grapefruit, red wheat, Sycamore tree leaves, kiwi.

Cottonwood Leaf (single ingredient).

Russian Olive Leaf (single ingredient).

I have a couple of on-line vendors considering carrying these items. I'll post details when they are available for sale. These dried products should last at least 1 year if stored in a cool, dry, dark place.

Where to buy:
http://stores.ebay.com/The-Happy-Hermit-Crab
http://www.thecrabbagepatch.com/sfnt.htm

Non-human Grade Food Trials

(article published in the Crab Street Journal)
Have you ever been tempted to taste something you fed your crabs? The ingredients of most prepared foods on the market contain many everyday foods consumed by humans: coconut, zucchini, apple, cranberry, etc. Those crab-keepers who create their own concoctions generally use foods directly from their own pantry, perhaps items from their own dinner plate! I’ve often questioned how effectively a human diet can suit a hermit crab. What we find in the produce aisle at the grocery is very unlike the items growing wild in their natural habitats. Leaves and twigs surely make up a considerable portion of their natural diet, but spinach and celery are probably not readily found in the wild. It makes me wonder what percentage of the foods we offer should really be human-grade. Suppose for a moment that a cornstalk grew on a beach--would wild crabs eat the kernels only or would they prefer the husk or the stem or the leaves or the roots? Our crabs may be longing for the very parts we disgard as “inedible.”

Because this topic has lingered heavily on my mind, I have begun a series of food trials to test out some of the local flora, starting w/ plants from my own back yard. I have been very satisfied w/ the results and no crabs have suffered harm. In my experience, the crabs eat what they like and avoid what they dislike. To date, I have discovered that burning bush leaves, Russian olive tree leaves, cottonwood tree leaves, showy milkweed, and swordfern are all safe foods that were enthusiastically eaten. Thanks to former brave explorers, we already know that leaves from maple and oak trees are safe and crabapple bark and blossoms are definitely favorites! What will your back yard tell us? If you don’t use chemical fertilizers or insecticides, why not conduct an experiment of your own?

The Epicurean Hermit

Special thanks to Julia Crab for her awesome website The Epicurean Hermit and for her personal direction on conducting food crab trials. You've been an enormous help to me in this project. I wish you all the best!

http://www.epicureanhermit.com/

The Safe Food List and Unsafe Food List links you see to the right are maintained by Julia Crab-->