Delurking and introducing myself

[CleverCrabCallsign]

Hello all. I've been a hermit crab owner for just over a year now, been lurking these forums for most of that time for info. Started off with 5 store bought purple pinchers, 4 small and 1 medium in a 20 gallon tank. I knew better than to purchase but on the final trip to Petco for setting up a ppsd tank they had a new batch in. It had just been a few sad looking guys barely holding on my first few trips but they had like 20 lively looking fellas in what was maybe a 10 gallon tank the final trip and I couldn't resist getting them along with the last of the supplies I wanted.

Having read up ahead of time I figured I would probably be lucky to have 3 of them survive their first molt and that the 20 gallon would be okay for the first few years. 6 months later the medium finally molted for the first time for me in December and they had all made it through at least 1 molt. The first to molt for me, Joy, was down for her third when Troll (my biggest boy) came back up.

So new plans were made. The little ones were gaining size quickly but I figured if I brought my substrate depth up a bit to around 8 or 9 inches and added a topper I'd be good for at least another year while I worked on something more permanent. It seemed like a good time to handle it because Joy was the only one down at the time and I only needed to slide the tank a few inches to the left on their shelf above the monitors (after putting some 3d printed braces and testing for the extra weight) to make the topper work. You can see the setup I had at the time pretty well in this video.

https://youtu.be/4SF9ddD5M5M

Unfortunately, despite testing the shelf after putting in the braces by slowly adding weight on the side it was moving to until it was holding with quite a bit more than what I estimated the weight of the substrate and topper to be, almost immediately upon putting the topper on the shelf started pulling out of the wall on that side. Took the topper back off but by that point the shelf was bad enough that I wasn't even comfortable leaving the original setup there for long and got someone to help me try to move it as gently as possible down to my desk below. We did the best we could but there were some bumps along the way and probably enough to collapse poor Joy's molt cave as I haven't seen her since.

Everyone else however is still fine and still on my desk with the new topper installed. I've also added 2 rescues from Craigslist about a month and a half ago, both smaller than any of my others when I got them. I have a 75 gallon and 2 24x18x18 terrariums for side by side toppers in the garage I've picked up along the way getting ready for the permanent home build so if there were aggression issues I figured the little guys could go in one of the terrariums for now but so far so good. Although the littler of the 2 went under within the first week and I haven't seen it since. Just about given up on that one making it but the other is strong still despite being stubborn about changing out of it's painted shell with stupid googly eyes glued on.

This video is pretty close to the current set up but the surface does get redecorated from time to time.

https://youtu.be/TVtQI9aw-Us

That's pretty much my crab journey thus far. I've worked out plans and my stand build for the new setup starts next week. Hoping to have that done in a week or two and then on to getting the 75 gallon ready to go. It's been a learning experience for sure.

[ROSIEonFIRE]

Hi! Welcome (I guess?) To the forum! Your setup looks sweet