HCA: Hermit Crab Association

I was in Petco this afternoon, making a grooming appointment for the BooDog, and decided to check out the mice and hermit crabs. Sadly, Petco always has hermies in painted shells, low temps and low humidity and today was no exception. However, when I was watching two tiny and micro PPs, I noticed a partially buried painted shell with pale blue legs barely visible. Consumed by curiosity, I was on the verge of calling over one of the associates to get the little guy out so I could look at him when the tiny PP made his way over and climbed right over him. The little blue guy woke up and poked his head out of the shell revealing those telltale E eyes! This was doubly amazing because I had no idea Es could be pale blue and this Petco never carries anything other than PPs!

Yep, smaller Es tend to be blues or even greenish. As they grow more oranges and browns come in and sometimes yellow.
I've only ever seen PPs at Petco or Petsmart too.

CallaLily wrote:Yep, smaller Es tend to be blues or even greenish. As they grow more oranges and browns come in and sometimes yellow.
I've only ever seen PPs at Petco or Petsmart too.

I've only seen the warmer color Es so this was stupefying! And at Petco, too!

I've almost only seen the green-blueish colored ones in person, mine just started turning a really neat redish brown color after this past molt.

Aw... now I'm missing the my original Children of the Corn. Those baby blues are gorgeous! But they never last through a single molt in captivity. *pout*












I found a lime-green one once:



OHH! I know, I'll dig out that old avatar for Valentine's Day!
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Yes! He was exactly like your second picture, wode. That lime green E is incredible ! So the blues and lime greens become yellows and oranges after their first molts? How mean of Mother Nature!!

Hahaha "children of the corn" And the avatar is way cute, love it! I saw some foods listed on one of the hermit crab web sites, that are "color enhancing". I wonder if certain foods would produce those bright color variations??? I only have PP's so they're pretty much normal PP coloring.

With Es, it may actually be UVB related. I think it was sugarselections who had an E stay blue through several molts, and the only difference was she was using UVB lighting. As adults though they will turn into tans and reds.

I've never believed in color enhancing foods. Hermits naturally will darken with age, so every molt will make them a bit stronger in color. Besides, I have 60 crabs, and if diet had any control over color then they would all be matching since they all eat the same thing! I've got a range of shades from pale pastels to dark almost blacks.

These guys all turned brown, orange and yellow on me within two molts:

Omg that E looks like a lemonhead! They're so cute!!!

wodesorel wrote:With Es, it may actually be UVB related. I think it was sugarselections who had an E stay blue through several molts, and the only difference was she was using UVB lighting. As adults though they will turn into tans and reds.

I've pretty much given up on determining why crabs display certain colors. There doesn't really seem to be much rhyme or reason to it. Most of my Ecuadorians have done the typical gray/blue ---> brown coloring as they grow, but occasionally someone larger will come up from a molt very blue after being brown and then go back to brown during their next molt. For a short period almost all my Ecuadorians of all sizes turned blue for no reason I could decipher. My first Ecuadorian, Jack, started brown as a small but as she got larger/older she actually switched to blue permanently.

here's my E that I've had for almost a year. I caved and bought 2 at one of those horrid beach shops, but I had been debating on ordering from LHC so I justified it. I took that picture last night. Unfortunately the other one didn't make it through his first molt with me I'm looking for a species buddy, but haven't had any luck so far. I hope that our local petco gets in E's! As bad as petco's are, our local one seems to listen when customers speak up. I had a talk with the manager back 2 years ago about the crabitat, and ever since it has had fresh food, both types of water (bowls are shallow, though) and humidity and heat. I honestly don't feel guilty when buying anything from our local petco... sorry it was off topic, it just excited me that a petco got in an E.


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Es are such clowns. 3 of my 4 are up and they are back to causing trouble the little heathens.

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