HCA: Hermit Crab Association

There are marine crabs in the water in the gulf.) Sorry I meant land hermits, I by-catch plenty of marine hermits while fishing for blue crabs. Sometimes ill pull up a pot of nothing but 15 or 20 hermits of all sizes from tiny to beyond jumbo, but they all go back in the water. Anyway thanks for th...

I use the next size down for a 10g. I know it says not to but I have to insulate it a bit for it to sufficiently heat the tank. I use blankets and such to do so. I also keep it on a thermostat and it never gets more than warm to the touch. I wouldnt worry to much about overheating in your case, but ...

Im on vacation at the beach and I was wondering if some real seawater would be a nice souvenier for the crabs.

The sea is the gulf of mexico, which doesnt have hermits as far as i know.

Will this water be a safe treat or a deadly toxic soup for my crabs?

I got the light while they were all down molting and have only recently started using it now theyre up, and with them being nocturnal I havent gotten to observe them to much when the light is actually on. I keep the light on a 12 hour cycle and Ive only been using white light regularly, only tried t...

I have an LED strip that can cycle through a few different colors, various shades of blue red green and white. I usually set it on white light, but the crabitat looks super cool in red or especially dark blue.

My question is will these non natural colors upset or harm my crabs?

I don't believe salt and the other heavy minerals in seawater can be carried by water vapor, so using SW may result in even more gunk to have to clean out of your humidifier as all the salt would be left behind in it. Someone correct me if I'm wrong but I wouldn't recommend it. Most commercial humid...

So basically soak everything in hot saltwater and let dry? I had planned to do at least that in the first place so awesome no extra work required. Also, anyone have any idea how long the said rope will hold up in a crabitat before it starts to rot/disintegrate? What with the humidity and all.. Graci...

If they're too thin just get a couple more and stack them together to make it nice and sturdy, they look like the type that should stack pretty close together.

I bought a length of (what I'm fairly certain is, package doesn't specify) hemp rope from michael's. I want to use this for something the crabs can climb around on and such. I see hemp on the safe foods list, so my main concern is there anything I need to do to decontaminate it from anything it migh...

If the moss is close to your heat source, that could potentially be drying it out more quickly.

Are you worried about escaping crabs? If that's the case and you feel it's urgent I would just weigh it down with a rock or something. I don't have a screen lid so I don't know their in's and out's but none of my lids physically attach, so I just put stuff on top, kinda ghetto but it works. Sorry I'...

Hmm not the answer i was hoping for, but you make a good point. I definately would want all the inhabitants to be comfortable and healthy, I guess my dream will have to remain just that.

This isn't something I plan on doing for a very long time (maybe never if the consensus says no), but a dream of mine would be to one day create a huge vivarium that imitates a little slice of a tropical beach. Something with water, and sand and rocks and all the works, pretty much an enormous crabi...

Some fake plants would probably spruce things up a lot, maybe consider hanging a basket of moss on the side and a way for the crabs to climb up into it. Decorating in a 10 gallon can be tough, but it seems like you know all the basics that need to be covered which is good. My best advice would be to...

Is the 5:1 ratio by volume or weight? Example 5 buckets of sand to 1 bucket of eco, or 5 pounds of sand to 1 pound of eco? One or the other will get you vastly different ratios..