Ethoxyquin and Copper sulfate

[Dakiato]

Hi, im new to crabs, and i want to know if ethoxyquin and copper sulfate are actually bad for crabs.I see people who say they have had bad molts from them. But if i give them it every now and again, with lotsa fruits, and other things. will it be fine? Or is it only certain crabs it affects.Thanks! All help appreciated.

[JediMasterThrash]

Ethoxyquin is an anti-oxident preservative. It is approved by the FDA in usages of 150ppm or less in pet and human food. Extensive studies have been performed and found no pathological changes from its use.Like everything, in high enough dose (5000ppm), it can become carcinogenic.But it's generally considered by pet owners (not the FDA) that any artificial preservatives (ethoxyquin, BHT, BHA) are unnatural and post long-term risks.Copper sulfate is a different story. Copper sulfate is an insecticide, and hermit crabs are under the Phylum Arthropod along with insects and spiders. So insecticides can be harmful to crabs, though the amounts present in foods are probably too low to cause problems. Humans and dogs aren't insects, and so copper sulfate poses no risk to us.Certain crab ailments have been speculated to have come from certain additives and preservatives. But no scientific study has been performed. In general, it's best to provide a diversity of foods for your pet, so that they never get too much of any one ingredient, or have a deficiency of any ingredient.

[Guest]

quote: Humans and dogs aren't insects, and so copper sulfate poses no risk to us. I have been researching copper sulfate and the research says it can become toxic at 11 mg/kg. It can also cause liver damage. Here's an article on it from '05. I am currently trying to find one in my nursing journals. In my opinion, if it is toxic to certain forms of life I'm better off just avoiding it altogether. Article:http://press.arrivenet.com/government/a ... 57317.html

[JediMasterThrash]

True, but that falls under my first statement that everything is toxic in high enough dose. It's just a matter of how much of it you intake. You can die from drinking too much water.Copper sulfate is actually an essential trace element in humans and animals, necessary for our health. It boosts the immune system and prevents anemia. We healthfully consume about 3.2mg a day.The amount in pet food is probably on the order of 10ppm, or about 1mg/kg. The minimum amount needed to be toxic is 11mg/kg. A normal dog weighs about 20kg, and a person 80kg, and a serving of food .2kg. This would require 200mg - 800mg to be toxic, and .2mg are present in a serving of food, so food contains about 1000 times less copper sulfate than would be needed to be minimally toxic.Like anything, a little bit is good for you. A lot of it can be toxic.

[KittyCaller]

THIS is exactly what I've been wanting to know about copper sulfate. I've heard it's bad, but I was having difficulty finding out. While I could find papers online explaing why, they were not written in Human. I could grasp bits and peices of what I was written, but you're talking to someone who never even took a highschool chemistry class. Right, anyways, I agree that proportion plays a HUGE role in how dangerous an ingredient is. I suppose the question I have now is not even the amounts pet companies put into foods (though I do question that) it's how much of it is being stored in hermie's body? I've heard that they don't expell some things easily, like heavy metals, and as a result they can build up overtime to cause problems. Is this the case with copper sulfate or parts of copper sulfate?

[Jedediah]

I'm not sure about the US, but in Germany Ethoxyquin often hides behind such phrases as "EU appproved additives".I try to avoid commercial food for all my animals. The only comercial food I buy are fish flakes, from a brand that doesn't use ethoxyquin, but vitamin E instead. I don't think that crabs need commercial food, although it makes preparing their diet a bit more complicated.

[Guest]

You are right, anything that you feed them does have the potential to be hazardous to their health. I do understand that. Now the thing that one must also keep in mind is that alot of times there is a food that is exremely good for them (for the most part) alot of people will continue to feed it to them. The amount that they use in pesticides is very small. The amount that is generally used is approxamately 2 grams of copper sulfate/kilogram of pesticide (this is consider the lethal dose for pigeons). Now with that information consider the following. An average pigeon is about 2 pounds maybe a little off. Give or take a few ounces. Now how much do your hermits weigh? I can tell you this, none of mine weigh even a quarter of a pound. The copper sulfate in the food as preservative makes it highly deadly for them. I do know that the sulfate compounds that occur in nature (I.E. copper sulfate, iron sulfate etc.) have a different arrangement and therefore react differently. So the one who said they eat it in flowers and such is correct however since it is made synthetically it becomes harmful. Allow me to pose this:No one will argue with me that humans need iron, right? So tell me how many of you guys go around licking metals to attempt to get your iron dose?Just a thought ~Inari

[breezeetew]

Thank you so much JMT for articulating what I have been thinking for quite awhile. You have quite a diplomatic way about you! quote:The amount that is generally used is approxamately 2 grams of copper sulfate/kilogram of pesticide 2 grams per kg is still a ratio of 1:500. And that is for a pesticide. Fairly low, but then again, what are the other ingredients? If it is pure water, that is one thing, but if it is other chemicals- some of which may magnify the pesticide effects either alone or by compounding with the Copper Sulfate, that is another.The pet food companies are using preservative levels in the foods, not pesticide levels. They want the food to be fresh, not to kill bugs or animals. They want repeat customers.I have no idea what preservative ratios are, but I would bet they are much lower than pesticide levels. I have a feeling JMT is right with his guess at 1/10,000 gram. To really be informed, a person would need to know what the preservative ratios are so that the two levels can be compared fairly. I can't say that I am feeling very informed right now, but I am definately learning. Next stop for me in my research would be to find out what those preservative ratios are. But, as I said before, each person has a right to make their own (informed, I hope) decisions.I am learning a lot from this thread and hope that everyone can remain calm to continue the conversation.

[JediMasterThrash]

Everything kills everything in high enough dose. Obviously it's good to know all chemicals or foods that are poisonous to crabs, and avoid them when possible. But I think a lot of the time, we neglect the important factor of dose or concentration, as well as variety.Everything is deadly in high enough dosage. Many things that are essential and healthy in small doses are deadly in overdose.For some things, like say a poisonous plant, if you ate a leaf of the plant, you'd have a large enough dose to get sick. But for things like copper sulfate, the amount you need to be an effective insecticide is on the order of grams.Hermit crabs and 100 times larger than insects, and the concentration of coppersulfate as a preservative is probably less than 1/10,000th of a gram.In the studies where copper sulfate was shown fatal to shrimp and marine hermit crabs, the concentration was high, probably about a million times more than you'll find in food.Things like ethoxyquin and copper sulfate serve purposes as preservatives in extremely small concentrations, and pet food manufactures have responded to inquiries and claimed that the doses are small enough to be barely measurable, and are safe for consumption (whether we believe them or not is debatable)Also, this is why variety is important. Maybe you have some food with coppersulfate, another food with ethoxyquin, and an assortmant of natural foods, maybe even some table scraps. Provided a variety, you're even more certain that the crabs won't overdose on one single product which may have a bad ingredient.I know and agree that it's preferrable to not have the questionable preservatives. I choose foods without them when possible. In general, natural is always better than artificial. But at some point, "crab paranoia" seems to take its hold. Everyone's so quick to accuse every product, store, or seller of being bad for hermit crabs, that we can't put it all into perspective.It's the same with the scares over slime coats in water, preservatives in food, silica in sand, humidity from lights, ions from metals, mold in tanks, bugs, old food bathing, deep cleans, unsafe plants and woods, painted shells, etc.It's gotten to the point where I see rants about stores or care sheets just because they recommend or sell a commercial food or offer a painted shell in their portfolio.If we're going to be this picky with crabs, we should start with our own families. First go through all the cubbards and fridge, and find everything with the words "partically hydrogenated" or "enriched flour" in the ingredients and throw them in the garbage. Then write down everything on the ingredients list for a can of Coke, and add that list to the throw-out search. Get a water purifier for the tap, and only buy organic foods.Some forums seem a bit more paranoid than others. This one actually isn't that bad. But I just think we need to put things in perspective more. A good commercial food that has been scientifically engineered to provide all the required nuitrients, even if it has 1/10000th of a milligram of a preservative in it, is probably still better than an inadequate diet from table scraps. Water with slime coat is probably still better than water with chloramines in it. A shell with a football helmet on it is probably still better than some of the tight-fitting cracked-up shells they had on the beach. Silica sand is probably still better than a thin layer of gravel.I'm sure someone's going to miss the point of my post and think I'm advocating poor crab care or something - I'm definitely not. I understand the importance of everything listed and providing the best possible care in all aspects for our crabs. My whole point of this post is just that I think sometimes we need to put things in perspective a bit more and turn down the crab paranoia just a notch.

[Guest]

Ok I do see what your saying. I was having problems getting that ratio. I hate technology sometimes. Anyway, when you feed your hermies foods (be it non-organic human food or a food with copper sulfate especially with hermit foods) There are studies done about the effects of a different chemicals on different animals. If you feed something to your animals over a period of time even in small doses it is bad for them. It's not as bad as feeding them huge amounts of the substance at once but it is just as bad possiblely worse. Now for the science part of this. CuSO4 has a solubility of 10 grams/100 grams of water. so that is about a 10% solubility at what a normal crabate is held at. The issue is not necissarily with copper and sulfate together, but when they break apart while being digested. The natural occuring compouds will break up just like synthetic, however, they are most likely at small doses (the natural) SO what I'm trying to say is, the copper is lethal do them to my knowledge the sulfate is not. The copper will kill them. To preserve the food there is more than there would be in the naturally occuring counter part. I would love to find the preservation ratios but I can't seem to find them. If you find any please feel free to let me know. ~Inari