HCA: Hermit Crab Association

Howdy guys!

My name is Jack and I'm a Biology major with a focus in general Zoology. I'm thinking about doing a summer research project on the successful captive breeding of PPs and I was wondering, do any of you who have already gotten involved with these projects have any tips for me? What worked well and what didn't? How did you perform water changes? Any advice you could give me would be awesome! I'm looking to write up an official report on this and potentially become published, which would make a huge difference in the world of Hermit Crab keeping and its effect o the ecosystem. Thanks!

If you go into the stickies under "Health and Breeding" you will find the threads in which kuza and NatAddictedtoHC's document their breeding journeys. However, I think there are only 3 people in the world who have successfully raised hc's from eggs as it is almost an impossibility in captivity unless you have excellent conditions in a well established habitat. Here is one of the links.
viewtopic.php?t=94071

Yep, I've read through all of these threads. I was looking more for any helpful tips that anyone who has tried and failed or succeeded could give me (what kind of containment they used for the zoea, what timeframe each of the stages took, what they fed the zoea, etc.)

It only works if you have females that are breeding, and if the eggs they produce are fertile. Out of a tank of 60 C. clypeatus I only ever find 4 or 5 individuals with eggs ever summer (could be more than that, since it's really hard to see the eggs) and not once have those eggs been viable. Either the females spread them over the substrate when it's time, or they put them in the water too soon and the zoea aren't fully formed. :/

Those threads have all that info. Wolfnipplechips and Curlz, from off the top of my head, had the most info on kreseltanks, which you will need for the zoea. Nat and naalide's were also great reads, and i BELIEVE have the most recent live babies, though i am not going to verify that right now.
All those who bred have not really been active recently, so i wouldnt expect them to chime in any time soon, cept for kuza, who makes a random glorious appearance sometimes. Maybe you should contact them personally, privately.
I believe none of the crabs bred were PPs.
It also takes a long time raising happy crabs before they'll mate, and after that, several tries before you can actually raise the eggs, since the eggs get dumped at bad times or places and end up dying.
Have you kept crabs long? How many do you have? Do they mate?


Crabbers unite!!!

Thanks for all the input! I've had mine for years now, but I only currently have two boys that will definitely not mate . I'm hoping over the summer that I'll be able to introduce a new colony of 20 (10 males, 10 females) into a 150 gallon with filtered freshwater and saltwater tanks and have this research carry over from this summer to the year following that and that next summer. So, hopefully, I'll have this project going for over two years, which will be plenty of time to get them acclimated and breeding-ready! In short, I know my general stuff, I just need time and funds from NSF and I need to figure out the mechanics of breeding, what's worked best, what didn't work at all... stuff like that.

And whoops, sorry wode! I missed your post there! Do you think it would help to increase my population size? I know this is a super risky experiment to be working on, but I feel like it's important and I'll have a lot of time on my hands this summer and the next that I could use to contribute to the betterment of crab-kind . Hopefully it's worth a shot!

It's worth a shot. I would suggest medium to large sized females, and borderline jumbo males. I don't think having a lot of crabs makes a difference, but you have to get lucky and have females that are capable of being fertile in captivity, of which there don't seem to be a lot. The males you really only need one big guy who is interested. Considering I had 18 males at one point all trying to get to a single female when it was time to mate, it's the ladies that set the mood! The biggest or strongest male gets the ladies, and in my tank it had always been Goji, Hannibal and One-eye who came out on top since they are so much bigger than the others. Last year it was a slightly smaller adoptee who got the ladies, but he was so territorial that I had been expecting it since I brought him home.

Breeding season for PPs seems to be May-Aug and eggs are held for just under 4 weeks. I have videos of the mating process, if you're interested: https://www.google.com/search?q=youtube ... 3&ie=UTF-8

Es would be a better option to try this with, since they have the shortened zoea stages that Aussie crabs do and they would be more likely to make it to land. However, not many people have ended up with fertile Es. I had one that left me zoea the first week of June, three years ago. I sent her to Sach two years ago and she got zoea from the same crab about a month ago. I think it was Scarlz and kuza who also found E zoea, but those are the only ones I know about. PPs with eggs and zoea have been much more common, and pretty much anyone with good conditions will end up with a egg-laden crab at some point.

nat_addicted just posted a ton of info on Aussie breeding on the HCA Discussion Page: https://www.facebook.com/groups/HermitCrabAssociation/

If I could hug you over the internet, I would! Thank you for your help! This is all going to be super super helpful to my project!

wodesorel wrote:
However, not many people have ended up with fertile Es. I had one that left me zoea the first week of June, three years ago. I sent her to Sach two years ago and she got zoea from the same crab about a month ago. I think it was Scarlz and kuza who also found E zoea, but those are the only ones I know about.

I had E zoea in August. They were all dead by the time I noticed but they had to be Es as the only PP in that tank at the time was confirmed male. Unless you're only counting those who found them alive. This was only the second time ever I've found zoea in the saltwater dish/pool. First time the tank was a mix of PPs and Es so I don't know who they belonged to (and honestly at the time, didn't even know for sure what I was looking at). I had some serious PP guarding going on this past summer too but never saw any eggs or zoea.

Sorry Calla! I was sure I was forgetting someone. I was counting everyone who found E zoea, dead or alive. I had been sick for several days when mine left them in the water dish, so by the time I found them they had been dead for awhile.

No worries. It was a sad find, though I'm not sure finding them alive and swimming would have been any better.
Around that time, I forget why but I hadn't checked in on the tank as often as I normally do. I'm not sure how long they were there.

I did 15 breeding attempts. Watched several other attempts and in my opinion only a Kreiseltank is there best solution to raise larvae.
Good Artemia and good marine salt are important.
Constantly good water conditions, temperature and density \ saltinity too. Daily water change and cleaning are also important.

And less is more. Only 100 larva in 5 liter salt water are enough. To get all fed and water healthy.

I wrote down all steps and work outs in my documents.

But a 100% option to be successfull has not be found yet!

( Like always please excuse my grammar and stuff- I am from Germany )

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