HCA: Hermit Crab Association

I am worried about the shells of the live crabs. They climb their background all day, fall asleep on it, lose their grip and fall. They're usually fine when they climb above an area with only substrate, but I'm worried about them falling onto a decoration and cracking their shells. Due to them constantly switching spots, I really can't move everything out of the way every 5 minutes. I don't want them to fall off the background and get injured, but I also don't want to remove the background because they love and use it more than anything else in the crabitat.

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Are the shells the thin whale-eye kind?

AwesomeHermit wrote:Are the shells the thin whale-eye kind?

Yes, this is why I'm worried about their shells.

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They climb trees in the wild and fall from pretty good heights. The shells should be okay in the tank. I've never had a breakage from a fall.

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I had a polsihed jade turbo shatter to pieces from a fall from my countertop - no crab in it, and it was only lino over wood so not a hard hard landing. I have also had those super thing tonna/tun shells get cracked while in storage from pressure from the other shells. Those two re the only shells I will not offer as my tank was the same height as my countertop. I have sent every other kind of shell flying at one time or another (butterfingers!) and have never had a break. Natural unaltered shells are super tough and well designed!

soilentgringa wrote:They climb trees in the wild and fall from pretty good heights. The shells should be okay in the tank. I've never had a breakage from a fall.

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That is probably true for most shells, but hermiwormi is mentioning those whale eye shells which are painted, and when the paint is off, I know they are very fragile and skinny

AwesomeHermit wrote:

soilentgringa wrote:They climb trees in the wild and fall from pretty good heights. The shells should be okay in the tank. I've never had a breakage from a fall.

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That is probably true for most shells, but hermiwormi is mentioning those whale eye shells which are painted, and when the paint is off, I know they are very fragile and skinny

Indeed the horrible painted shells I am providing turbos (since I have carribean crabs) and will be looking at magpie and other round opening shells pretty soon.

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