Medicinal bath for general sickness

Here's how I would suggest doing this:

1) Making the medicinal bath water (which you will make fresh each treatment):

A. The water needs to be the temperature of the crabitat, or about75-80 degrees.

B. You will need to add the appropriate amount of stress coat, or dechlorinater, to purify the water.

C. You will need to add 1tsp -1/2 tbs sea salt per cup of water to recreate the salinity of the hermit crabs natural shell water, which is about as salty as the ocean. (Burrgren & McMahon, 1988).

D. You will need to add the medicine (antibiotic or Mela Fix) and do some math to figure out how to get the dosage right for the amount of bath water you want to create.

2) Treating the Crab

A. Bath the crab as normal, but leave it in the bath water for five minutes or so. (I have seen my crabs voluntarily give themselves a bath for up to 30 minutes.. so they will be fine under water for 5minutes)

B. Do this to the crab once a day, around the same time, for three to seven days. Antibiotics should be administered for seven days (or as long as is indicated on the product label.) This may be hard on hermit crabs, to be bathed seven days in a row... so use your own judgment. Also, if your crab buries... you may not want to disturb him for another bath (AS LONG AS HE HAS BEEN BATHED AT LEAST 3 DAYS IN A ROW, then you can decide to discontinue or not)

C. You may decide you want to use the treated bath water in their water dish as well. This is a good idea... as ideally, the antibiotics or Mela Fix should be given continuously. The only drawback is that you will need to remove the other crabs, so they do not drink the medicinal water. You'll want to only treat the sick crab(because once you start treatment you will need to continue for at least 3 days so you don't create resistant bacterial strains.)