HCA: Hermit Crab Association

Ugg my married daughter trains horses for this lady and the lady brought some live coral for her salt tank. Her fish died so she is making the salt tank fresh water and daughter brought the live rock and the itty bitty sea crabs here saying look mom baby hermits I said noooooo darling they arnt. I sent her home with some ocean salt spring water and a 10 gallon tank for the rock and crabs.
She wanted me to put them in the 20 long fiddler tank. But dont marine crabs stay in the water all the time???? The fiddler tank is half water half sand and I dont think the saltinty would be correct.
And live rock thats over 6 months old....can I put pieces of it in the crab and fiddler tank? Anything live on it would have hatched out already right? Could I put in the salt water pools and the fiddler water and maybe it would still grow? There was a couple of smaller rocks plus the one hugh one.

Pretty sure all of that requires Marine Salt water environment...

Yea, I would think so too. I think out fiddler tanks are a bit too brakish for the marine crabs. But you could check out some marine hermit crab pages and see what their requirements are.

She is going to have to filter that tank with the marine crabs in it...salt water goes stagnant and the water in it need it to be constantly moving for there to be an oxygen supply for the critters in the water (the same thing happens with fresh water too)...they wont do well in an unfiltered tank.

Im pretty sure it does also. Before I got my fiddlers, I went to a marine store to get some live rock, because I wanted to cycle the tank faster (they cycle faster with something live in them), and they guy there told me that live rock wont live in brackish water and that it really needs to be a marine/reef setup to make it work. He also sold marine crabs and they said they have to be in an all water tank. Hope that helps

Angela

They dont have to be in a all water setup, as long as the water part in big enough and has the right chemicle levels for them. You wouldn't need to keep in a land/water setup unless some other animal you have in there with them needs it.

O.K. I'm going to start from the beginning here. Do they look more like this, [link no longer working]
or this
http://www.moabyte.com/reef/images/crab.jpeg

they look like the top picture and I posted this back in 2006. the most amazing thing about it is they are still alive.