HCA: Hermit Crab Association

All six of my crabs in the 55 gallon are up and freshly molted. They synchronized their molts.

I noticed that my substrate has been getting increasingly dry, but I had one down. I saw it up yesterday so I transferred the crew to an empty 20 with a bit of moss in the bottom and wetted down my tank.

I removed all the décor and stirred up the sub really well before and after adding the water. It took 2.5 gallons to get the sub back to sandcastle consistence. No foul odors near the bottom so that tells me I can mist a wee bit more.

Here are a couple of pics I took of the mad crabs, most are pretty blurry and off center. Sorry!

Sulking en masse:


Trying to escape the horror:

Don't touch me/I hate you:


I must bathe the horror away:




I love my crappy old shell/leave me alone:

Love the captions! They certainly seem crabby!

Sent from my Pixel XL using Tapatalk

Love the pics! Out of 13 hermies I only have good pics of two.

Sent from my HTC6515LVW using Tapatalk

In the third picture it looks like the crab is hairy inside the shell towards the back, is that the stuff mentioned that females have to hold onto eggs?

Sent from my C5215 using Tapatalk

BAAAAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!! Love it


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

Great pictures! Congrats on the successful molts!


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

kieagcarm wrote:In the third picture it looks like the crab is hairy inside the shell towards the back, is that the stuff mentioned that females have to hold onto eggs?

No, that's just hair from a fresh molt. You are thinking of pleopods, which are located on female crabs' abdomens. It is rare to see them unless a crab streaks. Great pics of the group Mool! The last lil guy who's holding onto the painted shell has gorgeous coloring! The captions are hilarious too- it's exactly what I think my crabbies are saying during maintenance! XD

Rawrgeous wrote:

kieagcarm wrote:In the third picture it looks like the crab is hairy inside the shell towards the back, is that the stuff mentioned that females have to hold onto eggs?

No, that's just hair from a fresh molt. You are thinking of pleopods, which are located on female crabs' abdomens. It is rare to see them unless a crab streaks. Great pics of the group Mool! The last lil guy who's holding onto the painted shell has gorgeous coloring! The captions are hilarious too- it's exactly what I think my crabbies are saying during maintenance! XD

I didn't think that hair had anything to do with gender, but wasn't 100% sure. Thanks for chiming in.

And thanks to all of you for the comments and compliments!

The one in the pool is the one who came up two molts ago without a BP. He molted again immediately and now has one, but it's funky. When he first came up, it was non-functional and folded under the bottom of his shell. It's now functional, but clunky. He's also the one who thought he would jack the bigger ones spare shell.

He drug around that way to big shell for a few days before finding a more suitably sized one.

The one in the painted shell was the last up from the fall molts.