blue crab feed?

[gemini9]

Well I went to lfs and bought some more live rock (cured) and out of curiosity, bought 2 blue leg hermit crabs to see if my tank can keep them alive. It's a fairly new tank and they are the first introductions. I have high nitrates and am doing water changes and skimming to bring them down. ammonia and nitrites are 0. I've got brown diatoms all through the tank.


But anyway, my question is, do I need to feed these two crabs? or will they just eat the diatoms? I never thought to even ask at the LFS and they never said anything about it. To be honest, with my high nitrates, they may not even survive, but I thought I would try and see what happens. If they need food, what do I need to give them?

 

[gemini9]

Anybody? I read that the blue leg hermit will eat algae, but with not allot of algae present except my diatoms which I don't think they eat, can I feed them regular fish flakes?

 

[JZ199]

Before I had much growth, mine would eat the fish flakes that my chromis liked, they'll pretty much eat anything you drop in lol, now they all go wild when any fish miss any of the mysis, brine, krill ect...

 

[gemini9]

I don't have any fish in there yet and it completely slipped my mind to ask the LFS what to feed them. LFS is about 45 minutes to an hour away so I may just stop by walmart tomorrow and pick up some flake food for them until I can get back to the LFS this weekend and get some kinda better food. It's a new tank so there's really nothing for them to eat yet.

 

[JZ199]

I had mine before fish also, they did fine eating the $5 bottle of tropical flake food for a couple weeks, all still alive and healthy now

 

[JZ199]

Not to get off subject, but glad I'm not the only one who has to plan pretty much a whole day to go to LFS, my closest is about 84 miles >.<

 

[gemini9]

Whoa that's a good drive. More like a ldfs cor for you. Long distance fish store lol. And expensive down here. I paid 3 dollars each for tjese two crabs. Pkus a tuebo snail that I lost. I think I left him at my girlfriend's. He'll be dead by the time i get him. Poor snail

 

[gemini9]

Stupid phone. I mean... "plus a turbo snail"

 

[kingsofke]

Don't worry too much. They are scavengers and will eat anything on the floor or rocks. If you have enough live rocks you may not need to feed for few days as the rocks will have die off as they cycle.

 

[Pete polyp]

Not to get off subject, but glad I'm not the only one who has to plan pretty much a whole day to go to LFS, my closest is about 84 miles >.<

Closest to me is 97 miles (besides petco) I always drive another 60 miles because there's 4 between here and there.

 

[gemini9]

Yaye. Little crabs are still alive woot woot

 

[Pete polyp]

You can feed them pieces of just about any seafood if you worry about them starving. I already had mysis that I was ghost feeding the tank when I put mine in. They went nuts over that stuff.