HCA: Hermit Crab Association

I agree 100% with everything Sugarselections said. Regarding hermit crab size, I think PPs grow to the largest mass but indos have the largest size? Something like that-- they both can get very large though.

Maybe they just need some time to figure out the shells? How long was the "shell goes on butt" learning curve for other people?

Glad to hear the zoea are looking good. I take it they're eating now?

How are the babies doing?

My aggressive E's came that way, which we discussed before. That's th only reason I dont' believe it's only condition related. It might help exasperate the issue, but I dont' think it's the main ingredient. Sorry to go off topic here, but I thought from the first sentence in the first post was brin...

I agree 100% with fraksocks. If you take the time to read through this thread and the "I hate my E's thread" you'll see a trend of E's being the aggressors for most people. Forget the documentation, we are the statistics. There's also confirmation bias and the fact that no, not all parties have repo...

There's an article about it earlier int he thread, yes. It doesn't say they fight "more" than other species, but it talks about compressus in general fighting a lot. But not even that. Maybe it's my history of working with zoologists and reading field studies, but nothing in the article wodes poste...

My very first post in this topic. I've had my Es since Nov. 2009 - almost four years now. I have always supplemented Vitamin D. My Es are not deficient. My Es still have behavioral trouble. Edit: I still have bad molts now and then. So....? Perhaps there is a difference in the bioavailability of ce...

I don't mean to be rude but I really doubt anyone on this planet is as busy as I am right now. Both my wife and I work full time (both leads at work and working 6 days a week most weeks) and we have 2 young kids (2 and 5) to take care of. Do you have kids? It's a LOT of work. I only get to sleep ab...

I don't think hermit crabs even get that much sun exposure From what I can tell, they're mostly or completely nocturnal. Even mine tended to hide and bury themselves when I had a bright heat lamp, but when I have my moonglo lamp in, they're much more active and willing to come out in the open. Even...

I don't have time to fish all this stuff up, I have a lot of other stuff to worry about at the moment but that paper would be eye opening for you. Also, if that's the attitude you want to take, that's fine. I'm done then. I apologize if this post wasted your time. We have noticed people are having ...

I added UVB specifically for Vitamin D synthesis. And I agree lack of sunlight makes people depressed, the winter blues if you will. So if my crabs were getting depressed or if all my E's became aggressive after not having UVB for a while, then I'd lean towards this theory. But as it stands, I just...

I also believe it's a far fetch to assume the crab can sense it's own vitamin D deficiency and become violent because of it. Also wanted to say, I got depressed when I was D3 deficient... and that's not a normal state for me. No, I didn't magically know I was deficient, but it does affect the body ...

Also, that paper says they found vitamin D in crustaceans, but not where it came from: "Numerous animal species far back in evolutionary history have been shown to contain 1,25(OH)2D including terrestrial crustaceans (18), sharks, lamprey, as well as frogs and fish (15), but the site of production ...

Vitamin D is in high amounts in the fish food I feed my crabs Precisely why I am suggesting they may need both dietary supplementation and light. Do you supplement calcium? Why not vitamin D? Calcium is in a wider array of foods, and your crabs likely get more calcium from their diet than vitamin D...

And I've thought about Vitamin D deficiencies before, but there are too many hermit crabs that are 5 or 10 or 35 years into captivity who molt regularly and are healthy. We were actually discussing Carol of Crabworx's hermit crabs that lived into their 30s. She fed them commercial food, and they bo...