HCA: Hermit Crab Association

mlakers wrote:

kuza wrote:yup just PM me if you need some. I have all sizes from 1mm up

Thank you, kuza!! I just spent an hour and a half reading (rereading) through your entire straw breeding thread. Man, it's just SO much work, isn't it? I'm tired just reading all your efforts...and more scared now, too!

It's so easy to be optimistic in that first week. I'm going to go up and check on them again right now!

This is why I built the K-tank, the jars are a LOT of work. With the K-tank it just runs itself and you can clean, suck/switch water etc.

And like you had, I have another female pacing around the saltwater pool, ready to drop eggs.

mlakers wrote:And like you had, I have another female pacing around the saltwater pool, ready to drop eggs.

Must be playing the right mood music over there!!

kuza wrote:

mlakers wrote:And like you had, I have another female pacing around the saltwater pool, ready to drop eggs.

Must be playing the right mood music over there!!

Lol!!!!!


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[quote=kuza]This is why I built the K-tank, the jars are a LOT of work. With the K-tank it just runs itself and you can clean, suck/switch water etc.[/quote]

But I do like knowing that if I mess up something with one jar, I have four left that still have live zoea to transfer over. It's a trade off, I guess.

Day Five begins. Still at stage Two. And they are ravenous. This little guy's tummy is green from pigging out on chlorella.

kuza wrote:

mlakers wrote:And like you had, I have another female pacing around the saltwater pool, ready to drop eggs.

Must be playing the right mood music over there!!

Huh. The only mood music playing around here these days is a continuous background score of me chanting, "Oh my god, please don't die, please eat, please grow. Go babies, go."

Lmbo!!! It's working! I think Kuzbass was talking about the mating though!!


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And I just want to say publicly, that if I get any substantial number of babies to land, I really want to share them with experienced crabbers with good setups who will agree to document their growth over time. The more I can disperse them to good homes of owners who will agree to do a monthly or quarterly check-in, the better. I would hope to track growth and behavior over time in different setups. I think it will be fascinating to get to that point. My motivation in all of this is to help the crabs, build a better scientific knowledge base within the crabbing community, and help improve ethics of the hermit crab pet trade. My (personal) goal would be for them to be seen as the long-lived "wildlife" that they are rather than starter/throwaway pets and the more we can demonstrate how "exotic" and complicated they are, the better off hermit crabs will be as a species on this planet.

mlakers wrote:

kuza wrote:This is why I built the K-tank, the jars are a LOT of work. With the K-tank it just runs itself and you can clean, suck/switch water etc.

But I do like knowing that if I mess up something with one jar, I have four left that still have live zoea to transfer over. It's a trade off, I guess.

Yes, with only 1 it's more for the next stage when they are starting to look for shells. I was planning to build 3-4 K-tanks, I purchased a whole 12 feet of 6 inch PVC but only got through one tank before my main male passed away.

I'm starting to see shed exoskeletons in a few of the jars, and I was pretty certain they were all at Stage Two already, so it's possible we're heading into stage three. I'll know for sure that it's not stage one stragglers if the water gets clouded with sheds.

It does seem most are at stage three by the end of the day today. I alternate between feeling like it's going to work and that they're all dying right this very minute. Such a roller coaster. It's actually really good (for my mental health) that I've decided to give them a dark cycle from 7pm to 7am. They sink down with the light off and forage on the bottom. I didn't have to do a first morning water change today because the food had all been cleaned up. They were ravenous, though, so I added phytoplankton and chlorella and the ground up shrimp pellets and the jars were pretty cloudy by the 11am water change so I did 50%, then fed them more and then changed it between 50% and 100% (for the messiest one) again at 6pm. Hoping things keep going well, but I know I'm entering the "high-loss" phase, so just trying to keep my head down and not get over-invested in an outcome. But it's hard to be detached. They are so adorable!

Oh! And got to see one actually molt. He was just swimming along and then--ZIP!!--swam right out of his skin. So cool!

ahh so great!

Cool! Thanks for the updates!!

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