More Eye Issues with Hermit Crabs
Yesterday I wrote about the fact that hermit crabs do not regenerate their eyes and eye crust. One of my purple pinchers had a bad molt back in May and came up with what appears to be some kind of growth around his eyes and discoloration. Initially, I blamed this on poor diet and ethoxyquin. This same PP just molted; in the picture above you can see that his coloring is better, but the eye growth remains.
While we do not know the long term effects of ethoxyquin or other chemicals in commercial hermit crab food, I don’t know that I can continue to blame those chemicals on the bad molts. This crab has had an all natural diet since April, it’s so hard to say what the long term effects could be from just a small dose of some of these preservative. It’s also hard to say what really causes these deformities in our hermit crabs, it could be diet, environmental conditions (crabitat), or just genetics. I struggle with the issue of the hermit crab diet. While I continue to feed all natural foods to my hermies, I have to wonder just what these chemicals really do to our crabs. There are so many crabbers who have used foods from FMR for years with no ill effects.
Julia Crab, of the Epicurean Hermit, is now making life a little easier for those of us who want to feed a natural diet to our crabs. She now packages her Hermit Crab Cuisine which is all natural with no preservatives added a quite a reasonable price. You can learn more about the Hermit Crab Cuisine on her site at http://www.epicureanhermit.com/. I have purchased two packages of her cuisine which I sprinkle on fresh foods several times per week.
