Can hermit crabs eat baby food

List of Foods Hermit Crabs Can Eat

By Betty Lewis

i Jeffrey Hamilton/Lifesize/Getty Images

Imagine how tired you'd be of eating the same thing for breakfast, lunch and dinner, day after day after day. If you're feeding your hermit crab the same food all the time, he's likely to be a little tired of it. Sheldon would probably enjoy a little variety in his diet.

Variety is Nice

In their natural environment, hermit crabs dine on a variety of foods, including decaying wood, grasses, plants, fallen fruit and things washed on shore from the tide. They're not fussy and are usually open to trying just about anything that gets their attention. You can experiment with Sheldon and offer him a few things from your breakfast plate, such as some scrambled eggs, or try a piece of popcorn on movie night.

Foods to Feed

There will be some trial and error to learn what Sheldon likes, but most hermit crabs have a sweet tooth. The Hermit Crab Patch notes that baby food is popular, particularly fruit flavors such as fruit medley, apples and bananas, mango fruit, guava fruit, sweet corn casserole, sweet potatoes and apples and applesauce. If you want to avoid baby food and use fresh fruits and vegetables, try blueberries, mango, banana, pineapple, grapes, sweet potatoes, carrots, corn, spinach, apple and broccoli heads. Walnuts, peanut butter, fresh rose or sunflower petals, honey, oatmeal and wheat germ offer a nice change to fruits and vegetables. Sardines, blood worms and meal worms are appealing, as is the meat you eat. If you give Sheldon meat, make sure it's not seasoned with any spices or table salt.

Foods to Avoid

If you don't eat processed foods, you can probably share much of your food with Sheldon. However, if you eat processed foods, keep them to yourself. The sugar and table salt in them can be harmful for him. If you give him edible flowers or grasses, make sure they're from flowers that haven't been treated with fertilizers or pesticides, which can make him sick. If you aren't able to feed him organic produce, the fruits and vegetables he eats should be washed with dechlorinated water.

Things to Think About

Since hermit crabs are game to try anything, you should be cautious of what you put in Sheldon's crabitat. Although pretty, painted shells can be dangerous for crabs; eventually the paint will chip off and he may ingest the flakes. You may want to keep some commercial hermit crab food on hand to ensure he gets the nutrition he needs. Some crabs will stash food in their crabitat, which mimics hermit crab behavior in the wild. Keep an eye -- and a nose -- open to make sure it doesn't stay in the cage too long and start rotting.

References

Hermit-Crabs.com: Feeding Your Land Hermit Crab
Hermit Crab Patch: Food and Water
Hermit Crabs.org: Basic Info
Hermit Crab Paradise: Food
The Crab Street Journal: FAQ: Should I Feed My Hermit Crab Meat?

Photo Credits

What Fruits Can Hermit Crabs Eat?

Adrienne Kruzer

Adrienne Kruzer is a veterinary technician with more than 15 years of experience providing healthcare to domestic and exotic animals. She is trained as a Fear Free Certified Professional to prevent and alleviate fear, anxiety, and stress in pets.

Learn more about The Spruce Pets' Editorial Process

Updated on 03/02/20

joeygil / Getty Images

In the wild, hermit crabs are not fussy eaters so they eat a wide variety of foods. As pets, hermit crabs will also eat a lot of things, including fruits, but that doesn't mean anything goes. Knowing what fruits a pet hermit crab should eat is important in helping it live as long as possible.

How Do Hermit Crabs Find Their Food?

Hermit crabs are able to find their food in two ways: by smelling the food and by seeing other hermit crabs eating. You can easily observe a hermit crab's sense of smell at home by placing one smelly food option and one not smelly option in it's home. Your hermit crab will most likely come out of its shell, wiggle its antennae, and then head straight to the smellier food item. This demonstrates how a hermit crab smells its food just like other animals.

Some people are surprised that hermit crabs can smell since a crab doesn't have a nose. Crabs instead have sensory receptors that are on the hairs of their antennae. When these antennae wiggle or wave around, the smell is drawn into these receptors allowing the hermit crab to smell the food.

What to Feed Hermit Crabs

Like humans, hermit crabs thrive on a varied diet but when feeding your hermit crab, focus on natural and healthy food options and eliminate processed foods from their diets. You can include vegetables, meat, fish, nuts, and fresh fruit in their daily diet since hermit crabs are omnivores so this often allows you to easily feed your hermit crab food straight from your refrigerator.

Hermit crabs will especially thrive when their diet includes foods containing calcium, carotene, and antioxidants. Formulated hermit crab food typically contains some of these things but carotene can also be found in brightly-colored vegetables like corn and carrots, both of which are healthy additions to a hermit crab's diet. An easy way to know if your hermit crab is deficient in carotene is to look at its color after molting. If it is deficient, it's color will fade from a bright reddish/orange color to a faded-out tan or gray after molting. Antioxidants are prevalent in many fruits and vegetables as well.

Fruits to Feed a Hermit Crab

Along with a quality formulated hermit crab diet, your hermit crab can and should eat, a variety of fruits. Safe fruits for your hermit crab to eat include:

Mango
Papaya
Coconut (fresh or sugar-free dried)
Apple
Banana
Grapes
Pineapple
Strawberry
Melon
Raisins

Offering Your Hermit Crab Food

The size of the food doesn't really matter for hermit crabs so do not feel obligated to cut up the food into bite-sized pieces. Your hermit crab will leisurely eat the food you have served and will take their own bites. Since hermit crabs are omnivores, they may even enjoy picking meat off the bone if you choose to offer some to your crabs. Just be sure that there is no butter or any other sauce on the meat, as this is not healthy for hermit crabs.

Food can be placed directly in the cage or in a flat bowl or plate with easy access for the hermit crab. Make sure any produce is washed and dried to remove any pesticides that might have been on the food prior to feeding.

Offering Your Hermit Crab Water

In addition to food, all hermit crabs need access to both fresh and saltwater. Hermit crabs need fresh water for drinking but most hermit crabs will also drink saltwater along with using it for bathing.

Two water bowls should be in your hermit crab's habitat at all times, one for fresh water and one for saltwater. Tap water should not be used as a source of water without treating it with a dechlorinating product. Most pet stores sell dechlorinating liquid drops which remove any harmful chlorine, chloramine, and ammonia from the tap water. Once these chemicals are removed from the water it is safe for the crabs. In order to make saltwater, special salts from the pet store can be purchased. Special water to salt ratios will be provided in order to create safe saltwater for your crabs to enjoy. Table salt should never be used to make saltwater.

Hermit crab

Tourists who come to rest in Anapa for the first time immediately run to the central beaches of the resort. Everyone wants to plunge into the warm waters of the Black Sea. In the shallow water of sandy beaches, curious eyes immediately meet with spiral shells that scurry along the bottom, leaving long traces. It is easy to pick up a defenseless crustacean and notice how it slowly shows its body. These are the famous hermit crabs, local inhabitants of the beaches of Anapa.

Appearance

The body of the crayfish fits snugly in a spiral shell, only the head and three pairs of legs are visible from the shell. The left and right front legs have claws of different sizes, a large claw serves as a sash for the house of the crustacean. The remaining pairs of legs serve to hold the body inside the shell. The lower part of the body is soft, without cuticle. The development of the body of the hermit crab is uneven, the right side grows faster than the left. Thus, water ventilation of the entire space of the shell occurs. The crustaceans living on the seabed in Anapa can reach sizes up to 6 centimeters.

Varieties

Two types of hermit crabs can be found in the sea of Anapa: Diogenes hermit and Clibanaria hermit.
Little diogenes have chosen sandy beaches, it is they who leave their tangled footprints in the sand. Sandy hermits settle in oblong shells of reticulate tritium.

Another species of hermits, Klibanaria, have chosen the stone bottom of pebble beaches. Klibanaria are larger than their sandy relatives, their coloring is brighter due to the variety of colors of the external environment. It is not uncommon to find that the klibanari rented the house of the rapana itself.

Habits

Mating and fighting for a female hermit crabs begin in spring and can last all summer. The hermit mother carries eggs inside her house. After maturation, young, larval-like crustaceans immediately float up into the water column. It will take a few more “rebirths” and molts before the soft crustacean sinks to the bottom in search of its first house. It is necessary to find an apartment in size, because in a large space it will not be possible to spread small legs. The adolescent period for the hermit is the most difficult and unpredictable at this time more larvae will be eaten.
Every season the crustacean should grow, for this you need to find a larger snail. An increase in size begins only after finding a new living space.

Sea hermit crabs are the cleaners of the beaches of Anapa. For food, they prefer dead underwater animals, thereby quickly cleaning the bottom. Thanks to hermit crabs, divers see a beautiful plain under the water.

Interesting facts

The name Diogenes, our crustacean received in honor of the Greek philosopher Diogenes, who, like a true hermit, was sealed in a barrel. Moreover, legends say that it was on the shores of the Black Sea that barrel-shaped Diogenes spoke his thoughts.

It turned out that the hermit's best friend is not a man, but sea anemone - a marine organism of the polyp class. Hermits invite sea anemones or anemones to settle on the roof of their house. Anemones are known to have stinging cells that protect their owner from intruders. Actinia for the remnants of crustacean food provides an indispensable service to our hero.

Sea Dragon

Rapan

Red-footed hermit crab - Hermit crabs | Non-commercial educational and cognitive Internet portal Zoogalaxy

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Red-legged hermit crab video

Distribution

The red-legged or scarlet hermit crab is common in the Caribbean region and in warm waters along the entire coast of America. These hermit crabs live in rocky areas of the intertidal zone or below it, or on coral reefs to a depth of 40 m. They keep on reef plateaus and on rocky placers along reefs, usually singly or in small groups.

Description

The left claw of the red-footed hermit crab is larger than the right one. The outer surface of the claw is without spines and only slightly hairy. There is a protruding pile on the top of the wrist of the left claw. Right claw of female without spines.

The walking legs, claws and carapace of this crayfish are intense bright red. The dorsal side of the carapace is often covered with light spots of irregular shape, sometimes merging into a piebald "scoop". The eye stalks and antennae are fawn-orange, and the eyes are greenish. Males and females do not differ externally. Body length reaches 3.5 cm.

Food

Scarlet hermit crab feeds on various algae and detritus.

In captivity, they consume various algae and detritus growing in the aquarium. As top dressing, you need to give various sinking foods for fish and invertebrates.

Hermit crabs can be kept in an aquarium with a volume of 100 liters or more. Not only are they hardy and hardy, they are also very useful in controlling the growth of filamentous algae, which can be a real scourge in a marine aquarium. Crayfish need to be provided with a large selection of shells of different sizes so that they can find a suitable home for each molt. Like many other invertebrates, hermit crabs are very sensitive to copper content in water, even small concentrations of this metal can be lethal.

Hermit crabs of this species are tolerant of other invertebrates in the reef aquarium. With enough food, you can not be afraid that they will begin to hunt by predation. Keep several individuals of the same species in a very spacious aquarium with a sufficient number of free shells.

These hermit crabs are often recommended as reef scavengers, however, they can cause significant damage if there are many of them in the aquarium.