2. 2023
  3. March

Care Of Hermit Crabs, Coenobita clypeatus

Coenobita clypeatus, also known as the purple pincher, is a popular pet hermit crab. They are relatively easy to care for, but there are a few things you need to do to make sure they live a long and happy life.

**Terrarium**
The first thing you need is a suitable terrarium. A 10-gallon aquarium is a good size for a single crab, but you can get away with a 5-gallon if you only have a few crabs. The terrarium should be filled with sand or coconut fiber, and it should have a few hiding places for the crabs. You can also add some rocks, driftwood, or other decorations to the tank.
**Water**
Hermit crabs need access to both fresh and saltwater. The freshwater should be dechlorinated, and the saltwater should be made with a 1:1 ratio of salt and water. You can buy hermit crab water conditioners at most pet stores.

**Food**
Hermit crabs are omnivores, and they will eat a variety of things. You can feed them commercial hermit crab food, fruits, vegetables, and even meat. Just make sure to give them a variety of foods to keep them healthy.
**Humidity**
Hermit crabs need a humid environment to survive. The humidity in the terrarium should be around 70-80%. You can increase the humidity by spraying the tank with water or by using a humidifier.
**Temperature**
Hermit crabs need a warm environment to survive. The temperature in the terrarium should be around 75-85 degrees Fahrenheit. You can increase the temperature by using a heat lamp or by placing the tank near a heat source.
**Handling**
Hermit crabs are not social creatures with humans, and they do not prefer to be handled. If you do need to handle them, be very gentle and do not force them to come out of their shell.
**Breeding**
Hermit crabs can breed in captivity, but it is not easy. It’s hard to near-impossible. The crabs need to be the right age and sex, and they need to be in a suitable environment. If you are interested in breeding hermit crabs, you should do some research first. Once the hermit crabs lay their eggs, their larva are pelagic, or their carried on the ocean currents until they eventually become practically microscopic hermit crabs and need a little tiny shells. Did I have any beans over here
With proper care, Coenobita clypeatus can live for many years. With a little love and attention, they can make great pets.

Sitemap

Pages

Posts by category

Koi Ulcer Disease and More Treatments in “Koi Health and Disease” Textbook

Your fish are sick, so what should I do? Stop the struggle, going over and over it on Google trying to find everything in one place to save Koi and Pond Fish. And you find stuff but it's written by ChatGPT or Bard and it's either wrong, ''generally” right, or devastatingly shallow. It's all overview.
You need the “what” and the “how to”
So, there's a book you might be interested to see, especially in time for Spring when pond fish diseases become a “thing”.  Because it's on Amazon.com, you can have it overnighted in a real emergency.
 
 
Category: Pets
Publisher: Dr. Erik Johnson
Language: English
Country: United States
Keywords: Fish Treatments Symptoms
 
Description: This is 15 years of Vet experience with all aspects of Koi health. Treatments and tips for a healthy environment, proper husbandry, symptoms of disease and remedies for parasites and sores, Dr. Johnson covers it all. In plain terms for the hobbyist, he provides the details you NEED to save fish. Symptoms, simple tests, logic and simplicity to educate you on preventing and treating fish diseases. This book is as timely / timeless as the appearance of fish disease, and the need for education in the testing and treatment of these conditions in fish. Learn about prevention and treatment BEFORE you’re in trouble.
 
“Anyone that has bought one koi, should have this book before they buy number two!” – David H.
“Thanks for writing such an informative, easy to read book. I appreciate your easy going sense of humor and style of writing!” – Patti B.
“Excellent for beginners, without sacrificing plenty of depth where needed. A Koi keeper's bible!” – S.G. Ontario
“Not a wasted word. Well done!” – Mike S.
 
Thanks!
Doc
 

What The “Cool Vets” Believed

Fads and Fiction in Veterinary Medicine

Sensational claims regarding products, medications, procedures and infectious diseases have sold a lot of services, products, medicines and food throughout the years.

We just KNEW: Rottweilers and dobermans are poor at developing immunity to parvovirus. This was known as a published fact in the 90s. Now, it is “known” to be not true. Never even was true. Which is confusing because those of us who were in practice at the time saw that the majority of dogs with Parvo coming to our office were in fact Rottweilers.

We KNEW: For the past 40 years, feeding the lots of protein into dogs with kidney impairment was worsening their condition. Now, we know that that University-Sworn-well-researched FACT was just a myth. 

You can feed a kidney failure dog all the protein it wants and there’s no problem. Do you know who said that? Doctors Foster and Smith, citing a piece of research from 1990 which was almost 30 years ago.

Shite We Endorsed, or, Worried Excessively  About:

    • Anipryl selegeline
    • Potassium bromide
    • Keppra
    • Bird flu
    • Mad cow disease
    • Equine encephalitis
    • Ketoconazole
    • Canine influenza

Apoquel  The manufacturer sent patients running to the vet for this new miracle drug and the veterinarians responded by selling as much as they could possibly get. And then one by one they started to realize they were selling a cancer-causing drug. But they had initially bought into the hype the company built around this product.

More Shite We Bought Into:

  • Epilepsy from nextgard and flea control
  • Dog deaths from Trifexis
  • Gastropexy for large breed dogs
  • Thermometers that take the temperature in an ear
  • Feline Infectious Peritonitis vaccine
  • Dental disease vaccine
  • Giardia vaccine
  • Feline heartworm disease
  • Digital flexor tenotomy.
  • Laparoscopic spay going in the side, problem with assessing bleeding and or correction if you drop a pedicle, access to stop the bleeding.

There are ways of doing things that were replaced by legitimately better ways of doing things, for example anterior cruciate ligament surgeries that were done with fishing string because we didn’t have anything better, now they do a completely different sort of surgery.

What I am talking about is the way “everyone is doing it” all of a sudden as a fad that may last summer or two, and then: The profession going back to the tried-and-true old way.

  • Canine influenza, with especially SCANT prevalence and variants appearing fairly quickly.
  • Apoquel the cancer skin medicine.
  • Super glue on the de-claws which caused foreign body reactions and complications with healing. There was nothing wrong with the way we did it, and then new and improved ways were invented, but the superglue fad lasted almost 5 years
  • Every three-year immunizations based on research from 1990 and 1995 and adopted by any veterinarians who are “in the know”. The fact of the matter is most of the veterinarians tooting this horn the loudest are celebrity veterinarians who need something sensational to say to draw attention to their new dog food.

And of course the people jumping on the bandwagon with every three-year immunizations are comfortable with their decision ……until they are going someplace like turkey or Afghanistan where Parvo is extremely common and THEN watch what they do: they don’t put their money where their mouth is, they booster the immunizations contrary to everything they are asserting on Facebook. Their argument would be “just to be on the safe side“ and isn’t that all vaccinations are?

Three-year immunization cycles, leaving animals vulnerable to, and suffering with a resurgence in canine viral parainfluenza for the last 3 to 5 years. 

You know what it boils down to for me? I cannot stand to clean up diarrhea and vomit. While all those guys in lab coats and “celebrity-vet-slash-petfood-salesmen” are fighting about this, I am going to immunize my pet the way I have always immunized my pet, because I have never had to clean up vomiting and diarrhea from any preventable diseases except once in a puppy I got that already had parvo.

Judge Tilzer and The Doctors: Thanks, Sterling Optical!

A dog or cat with a fracture in a leg will not use that leg. Even if you pick up the other leg, it will roll down onto the fractured leg. They will bear no weight on a limb fracture.

But that does not mean if the dog will not bear weight on the leg, that it is fractured.  This is too much for some veterinarians to keep in mind. So they need x-rays. Even as the pet is walking around. And they will find nothing because cartilage and tendon lesions do not show up on x-rays but that is never explained to the consumer. 

A cat with a fever of any significance will not eat. But that does not mean a cat without a fever will eat. And, it does not mean that a cat that is not eating has a fever.

This is way too much for some veterinarians to keep in mind. So they need bloodwork. (They also need the % commission on that blood work.)

I haven’t seen this in print anywhere in an employees manual, but there is a “breadcrumbs, testing algorithm ‘rhetoric, a party-line“ at work in certain veterinary practices, especially at the franchise or corporate level. And that is the “stock answer“ to any question being asked:

“What’s wrong with my pet?”

“We should be able to answer that question with the results of a few tests.”

[The test results indicate this problem.]

“What’s the prognosis?”

“We should be able to tell with the results of a few tests.”

“What are the chances of my pet survival?”

“We should be able to tell with the results of a few tests.”

“OK so we know it’s un-treatable, is there anything that would buy time?”

“We should be able to tell with the results of a few tests.”

“This looks really hopeless, should I put my pet to sleep?”

“We should be able to tell with the results of a few tests.”

If you get that answer over and over again from a doctor at the franchise, please realize you are feeding a commissions-based machine. 

Shareholder businesses are opened exclusively for profit.

Private practices in general, were started by some “sciencey”-kid who got out of Vet school and needed someplace to practice. And maybe they didn’t want to work for somebody else. But then, down the road, corporations noticed that they were making decent money, so they decided to come in and cherry pick the more profitable revenue streams in a private practice, and open businesses based on these services, and exclusively on profit.”

And you might say “well, that’s capitalism.” But it was only ONE federal court Justice, Judge Tilzer, in 1960, who thought that doctors AND (remarkably) NON-doctor Executives within corporations, in fact should be able make decisions in your healthcare based principally on profit. Nobody else thought that, prior to Judge Tilzer. 

https://drjohnson.com/the-takeover-of-veterinary-practices-by-non-veterinary-owners-who-are-motivated-chiefly-or-solely-by-profit/

“What should we do? I think either way we are likely to compromise the patient.“

“It doesn’t really matter what WE think. Some ‘Financial-guy’ is coming down from Corporate  to tell us what to do. I’m sure it won’t be in the best interest of the patient.“

Raw Diet For Cats

Tried and trusted, this recipe is a good one, and thorough. 

I’m going to try to get pictures of the preparation. Yes it’s kind of a project, but you can prepare plenty  for the next month or two. 

pdf icon 2023-03-27-14-28.pdf

Henry: Possible Skin Disease

Skin allergies, often manifest as chronic infections and itching and sores in the skin. They are like three sisters. It’s kind of rare to have one without the others.
Not all allergy progresses to infection.
Not all infection is caused by allergy.
Not all allergy causes sores.
But most of the time, most of the time it’s a triad..
For dogs like Henry, sometimes what I’ll do is check them out and if it’s determined, they should be on antibiotics through a cycle, or seasonally, we’ll fix the record so that you can get those as needed.
Figuring that out, is a combination of questions, direct exam of the lesions, figuring out if they’re infected or not, and whether they need to be separated from something else. Tomorrow I will look at his record and see what it reveals. It might be good to take a quick peek at him.

Won’t Eat Dry Food, So They Can’t Lose Weight

“He won’t eat plain dry food.”

“When I left her food dry, she went almost two days without eating. You said she’d eat, eventually. Wrong.”

“He hardly eats at all!”

“He’s always been fluffy!”

“How can he lose weight if he won’t eat the dry diet-food’?”

“Can I mix peanut-butter and ice-cream with the diet-food so he’ll eat it?”

“I won’t starve my dog.”

“He just needs more exercise.”

“The treats are very small!”

IMG_3254.jpeg

Carp Edema Virus, upload, Koi Sleepy Disease

For those of you looking for a little bit more information about Koi sleepy disease, Koi sleepy disease virus, or Carp Edema Virus disease, I did a review of the literature and put together just a few of the more important documents that can be looked at, for free. Their authors are fully annotated in unedited articles in a stack over at my website.

I like to look at the abstracts and the discussions of how the studies were run and what the doctors experiences were with the fish with these disorders. And if there was anything that sounded their results, for example not being able to sustain an infection. The references are also good to follow up and read some of the articles in the bibliographies. 

Carp Edema Virus Disease or Koi Sleepy Disease article.

Back in the 90s and early 2000s we used to see occasional ponds of fish that would be trying to fall asleep. Some of the fish would roll on their sides and they wouldn’t come up until you disturb them. Then they would “shake it off” and act like nothing was wrong. This practically only happened in very very cold water, and in systems that were infected with lots of ciliated, protozoan, parasites, particularly, Trichodina. I always thought it was just a fulminating stress response. You know, cold, parasites, recent transport, equals stress.
The treatment we used, which seemed to be successful. Most of the time was warming the fish into some range that allowed them to think a little. Most of the time they stopped ‘sleeping’ when they got about 55 or 60 DF. and after we cleared their parasite burden.
Looking back on it, for all I know, that was just the passage of time and not the temperature or clearing your parasites. But that’s what we did. And we didn’t have mortalities. Besides the first couple that got me the phone call anyway.
And, of course, we also don’t know that it was koi edema virus. 
What little information I have, I put over at my website Drjohnson.com