Big Crabs, Little Knowledge Here

[WillLack]

Hi all.

2 day crabdad here, and I need a load of help. I live in Texas (INLAND), and I have a 3 year old daughter. My mother visited Galveston, on the Gulf of Mexico, and sent me a picture of a hermit crab, and asked if I thought my daughter would like it. I thought "sure, why not?". She then proceeded to tote back 10 (TEN) Thinstripe Hermit Crabs (Clibanarius vittatus), of varying sizes. They survived 3 days in her RV in plastic totes with beach sand, and ocean water.

Long story short, here, is that I have no idea what I am doing, and am ill prepared for this. My wife is not too keen on us having TEN hermit crabs in our living room right now, and I know I am doing a substandard level of care. However, I'm doing what I can, reasonably, having had 10 marine crabs tossed my way. I've searched, and searched, and searched for specific information on care for these crabs (there dont seem to be care guides for them here either, unless I missed it), and I've gone to every local pet store, and they're all 100% as clueless about hermit crabs as I am, and if they DO know anything, its relating to land crabs, as these seem PRETTY MUCH marine/shore based.

Here's what I have done so far, please forgive my ignorance, and poor care. I have no idea what I am doing.

Before I knew anything, I knew we had several plastic bins of rancid smelling crab+water+sand+ sausage, shrimp, etc that my mother attempted to feed them. Yesterday, while she was here (AND BEFORE SHE LEFT TODAY) we hand sifted ALL the sand, which got a lot of trash, plastic etc, out of the sand, but is also apparently a bad idea because we lost out on a great deal of shell fragments etc that was likely good for the crabs, but also got rid of all the mess of food that was in there. We also strained the water to get nasty smelling debris/small plastic etc out of the water. I followed a youtube guide to making your own salt water (sure this was a mistake too,) at 1.23 oz coarse sea salt per 34 oz tap water. We put all the sand in a long, appx 8 inch deep plastic bin, and simulated a beach, with the sand tapering down to shallow water. We bought lightweight natural shells of varying sizes for them all to swap around, and bought hermit crab pellets, as well. To be honest, the crabs arent eating the pellets. It looks like they're just filtering the water and eating that way, because they make cool little currents around them. That being said, I put a few pellets in a bottle cap, buried the bottle cap to its rim on the "beach" put a few spinach leaves on the beach. I even bought 4 dead ghost shrimp today to put in the water to see if they'd eat on them. Today, also, I went and bought some "live rocks", as well as a bubbler for the "deep" end of the water. The whole situation doesn't really smell now unless you get nose level with the crabitat, so i'm staving off side-eyed looks from my wife, so far.

I really want to give these crabs a shot, but I've been able to find NO information on how to help these coastal crabs survive. Almost all information I have is for land crabs. Do they NEED a pool of fresh water too? I mean, they live in the ocean, right? I'm pretty clueless here, but my intentions are good.

I hope this is salvageable.

**EDIT* after i added the bubbler to the deep they're much more active, they're congregating around the bubbles, so I assume that is a good thing.

Will

[JoeHermits]

They’re fully marine, so they’ll need a marine aquarium. I recommend checking an aquarium forum like Fishlore to set one up.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.fishlo ... rs-amp.htm


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[soilentgringa]

They need to go back home. If you can take them back to the gulf they need to go.

Thin stripes grow rapidly, are aggressive and setting up an aquarium properly that can hold 10 of them and give them enough room to live without cannibalizing each other means at least 100 gallon saltwater aquarium setup.

Many reef tank keepers wont take them because they will attack fish given the close quarters and opportunity in a tank.

I’m in Dallas and rescued two within a year of each other that people brought back in shells.

I had a 20 gallon setup for the first guy and shortly after adding the second rescue one cannibalized the other despite having adequate tank conditions (live rock, accurate salinity, etc).

If you live near a zoo or aquarium call them and ask if they could take them too.




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[WillLack]

They're still alive, and somehow havent killed each other yet. In fact, a couple of them have swapped around shells, which is super fun. I'm trying to get them back, if not, trying to get in touch with folks around east texas here that can adopt them. Thanks for the info all.