HCA: Hermit Crab Association

Hello Friends!

I am getting ready to purchase a few (4 to 6) hermit crabs for my family. I am super excited, and I want the crabs to have long and happy lives.

First, the crabs: Where did you all buy your crabs? (A chain store, a "Ma & Pa" pet store, through the mail, something else?) we went to PetSmart, and the crabs looked in bad shape.

Second, the setup: We have a 20 gallon aquarium that we have filled with six inches of play sand. We bought a thermometer/Humidity deally at Lowes, and have it resting on the sand. I plan on covering it with 2 pieces of plexi-glass with a small space in between them for air flow. We bought an "All things living Hermit Crab Heating Mat." http://www.petsmart.com/reptile/heaters ... tid-500035 for warmth. We haven't worked out the water situation yet. Not sure what kind of salt to use to make the salt water, or the ratio. We are also looking for toys and things for them to climb on.

Anyway, if you have any advice for an aspiring crab connoisseur I would certainly appreciate it.

Thanks.

Hello, welcome to HCA! I'm sure your family will love the future hermit crabs that you are planning on adopting! Also, you are already in the right direction for caring for hermit crabs! You already know all the basics, and I hope I can help with your questions. I have had a bad experience adopting from chain stores, such as Petsmart. You are right, they are usually are in pretty bad shape. I bought two crabs from Petsmart and they both died in the first few weeks, even though they had the right conditions. I recommend trying to adopt from Criagslist, or check the adoption topic on here and see if anyone needs their crabs to be adopted.
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Unfortunately besides that, there are not many options of buying healthy hermit crabs from stores or online. If you can't find anyone to adopt from, you could try a pet store.

Just a recommendation, you may need more than one heating source. The All Living Things heat mats, and any heat mats from pet stores do not give off enough heat usually. I recommended an Ultratherm under tank heater, on the back side of the tank. If your heating mat you have now gets the temperature above 70 degrees F, then you should be fine, but crabs are most active around 80 degrees F.

Lastly, for the salt water, I use Instant Ocean. You will need to have the water dechlorinated before you add the salt mix. You can buy it at most pet stores in the fish section. The ratio will be on the instructions of the box, for Instant Ocean, I believe it is a half cup for each gallon of water. You will also need fresh water, which needs to be dechlorinated. You can use a conditioner, I use Aqueons tap water conditioner for fish. Here is a link from here that explains all of it.
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I hope some of this helps, and I wish the best of luck with your future crabbing! If you have any other questions, I'll be happy to try to answer them.

Welcome to the HCA! There's loads of information here on hermit crab care.

As for climbing toys, my crabs love cholla and cork bark/rounds. Fake plants are also good for climbing and provide much appreciated cover. Many crabbers hang baskets or shower caddies to be used as second levels and to hold extra shells and moss. Really anything crabby safe.

Thanks for the welcome, and the info!

Well, we ended up purchasing six little guys from a pet store. They are home now and seem to be getting on alright. Our only problem now is that our "little guys" are not all as little as I thought, and the shells we have are not near big enough for the bigger crabs to change into. So we are on the hunt for some new shells that won't break the bank.

I would recommend going strait to Micheal's the craft store and then at Micheal's going strait to the decorative shells section and buying a few packs of shells, you could buy a big or two for about 30 dollars in Canada with a lot of different shells for now or a smaller pack or two for 6 dollars in Canada (I live in Canada but just buy what I have described there.) that will do for now but you should order from The Hermit Crab Patch online and order they measure there shells by the opening so put a ruler up to the opening of the shell your crab is in and then go to this link to show the next size up http://www.hermitcrabpatch.com/kb_results.asp?ID=19.
Hope this helps

Hermitcrabpatch.com has a ton of shells ranging from 75¢ to $2