HCA: Hermit Crab Association

Hello, My crabs have a lot of extra shell. They always get dirty with sands inside.
Should I clean the shell?
is my crabs going to take a shell that is dirty with sand?

I cant rinse the shell weekly, I could but I mean it’s a lot of work.

ty

Do you have a shell shop? A shower caddy mounted on the glass keeps the shells clean and together.


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Placing them in a little container thats accessible to them can help keep them semi clean. I say semi because crabs get sand on everything lol

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I highly recommend a shell shop. (Which are what the two above posts mentioned) Some people use shower caddies, some people use baskets. I will tell you shell shops do tend to become potty spots But...the shells due tend to stay a lot cleaner the higher up they are. I line my shell shops with coco matting on the bottom.

Actually right now I have a shallow dish that is sitting on the sand that contain all the shell.
I wanted to get something higher that I could stuck on the wall…
main concern is that I try to not stack all the shell one over the other.

Is it a real concern? Could I stack all my shell in a small corner shower caddy?

How crabs get the shell from the bottom?

ty

If need be, you could rotate them out weekly. also increases interest for the crabbies, as they like 'new shells'.

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For high up shell shops you can add some kind of climbing rout. Rope, a branch, a ladder, a lego staircase, netting - literally anything you can think of that they can climb will work. Zip ties are handy to connect things to the caddy itself. One of my shell shops can only be got to by going up to the rim of the terrarium & climbing halfway round the tank to the caddy. My crabs still found it.

And crabs can generally move the shells around to get to the ones they want to check out.

bmer wrote:Hello, My crabs have a lot of extra shell. They always get dirty with sands inside.
Should I clean the shell?
is my crabs going to take a shell that is dirty with sand?

I cant rinse the shell weekly, I could but I mean it’s a lot of work.

ty

thank you so much for this thread. I have had the same thoughts. I can't seem to keep the shower caddie up as the suction cups keep failing or it rocks so far forward they everything falls out. Any suggestions?


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I had my shells in a caddy on the floor. They rarely went in. Used it mostly to cross to the other side. So I put my shells directly on the floor and they now get checked out constantly. However...they of course get dirty. Quickly. A lot. I'm asking the same question previously asked. Will a crab choose a shell that is dirty? Or do I really need to clean them every couple of days?

In my experience they will only look at dirty shells if they are really needing a change. Clean shells get them to change more frequently, not because they had to but because they can do so on a whim. It takes them a lot of energy to clean a shell out enough for it to be comfortable - something that is okay as it is what they have to do in the wild! - but they won't do it often, so if you enjoy watching them shop around or get a kick out of seeing what they may have changed into, then clean shells are the way to go.

I rinse my shells off every few weeks, and dip them in msw