It's new food night in the crab tank

I got inspired reading one of Julia Crab's posts on http://www.epicureanhermit.com/ today.

Her post was about the importance of foods rich in lutein and zeaxanthin to the diet of crustaceans (this is the link to an article she wrote; the web site is not working at the moment so I can't search for the post).

So, the crabs got some crabby scrambled eggs - an egg with rough chopped romaine, shrimp, peas, and spinach. Then, I sprinkled on spirulina and kelp powder to make it even more smelly and garnished with the shrimp tail and some egg shell.

I also put in a shell full of crushed walnuts, because I hate to leave them without some kind of dry food as well.

This will be a grand experiment, because they've never had romaine, peas, spinach or walnuts.

So far, Coconut and Sonic were sampling the walnuts - Coco even pushed him out of the shell at one point.

Originally, this was going to be a meatless dish, but we've got some new crabs and we've got some (probably) molting crabs. Normally we let the crabs molt in the main tank, and we've never had a problem, but occasionally nutrient deficiencies in hermit crabs can lead to cannibalistic tendencies - especially victimizing molting crabs who are at their most defenseless.

I'd much rather they take it out on the shrimp.

Shrimp are very closely related to land hermit crabs - shrimp, lobster and crayfish are probably their closest cousins. A meal of any of those (especially if you leave them some shell as well as meat) will satisfy a whole lot of nutrient deficiencies.