HCA: Hermit Crab Association

So I’m a relatively new crab keeper in the sense of actually knowing about proper care. My mom is a teacher and has been keeping hermits as part of her science program as long as I can remember, with moderate success at keeping them alive. I figured out about 6 months ago that we’ve been doing it wrong and that’s why they always die in a few years! I think the reason any of them survived so long is that she’s always kept 6 inches of moist sand for them, so even though conditions were poor they could still bury and molt successfully. When I was very young she had some large crabs and I now know that not having deep enough substrate was likely why they died. So anyway I don’t have my own job, so the process of buying supplies has been slow, but I’ve finally acquired the basics of what I need to set up a new larger tank with the proper environment.

All this being said, I am worried about shocking my crab Sebastian by suddenly moving him to the new proper environment. I have read in my research that it can be dangerous to move a crab used to low humidity into a high humidity environment because they might have a hard time breathing after so long in low humidity? Is this true?

For context, we got Sebastian about 9 years ago as a small crab with many other crabs. Over the years the other crabs all died, and my mom stopped receiving new crabs from the school. There was one other crab that survived and has been his buddy for many years. However, he was never very strong or healthy, and he passed away 2-4 weeks ago (he was buried, only noticed when his shell surfaced two weeks ago without him). Sebastian is the only one that ever came close to “thriving” in the sub par conditions of my mom’s 10gal tank. He is very active, loves to eat, doesn’t mind being handled, and is all around seemingly a happy growing lad. He is therefore (I assume) very accustomed to his current living conditions.

Basically, I am wondering whether I should get the humidity of the new tank up to snuff before or after moving him to the new tank. Is it better in your experience to increase humidity gradually or just put them right into the proper humidity? I would be very sad if he died from the stress of moving to a new tank environment…

I forgot to mention that I do know he needs a friend or two. I just want to get the new tank up and running before adopting him a friend or two.

Some websites will tell you that humidity must be raised slowly, but that is a myth. Getting hermit crabs into good conditions shouldn’t be postponed. Veterinarians with other humidity-sensitive animals always raise humidity to max immediately.

Basically you can just set him in the new tank as soon as it’s ready. If you want to get him a tankmate, great, but they’re not as dependent on others as traditionally believed. If anything group living is more about resource exploitation than sociality.


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