Question about crabitat
Posted: Wed Sep 04, 2019 7:46 pm
Hello all! I'm a new crab owner. I teach in an elementary school. We just moved to a brand new campus with lovely science labs. I think it's important to have live animals for the kids to observe and (hopefully) interact with. A teacher was rehoming her hermit crab, so I offered to take it for the science lab. She said it came with a cage, substrate, and food. She said it is a forest hermit crab and therefore is fine to have 'leaf litter' substrate. It is in a wire cage with a solid bottom. There's no heating lamp, no humidity reader, no sand, and a very shallow shell with a sponge and water. She said she had coconut fiber substrate in it until Monday (we have a teacher and at least one student on campus who are very allergic to coconut, so she decided to err on the side of safety and replace the coconut fiber with leaf litter). She said she spritzed the substrate daily. She's had him for several months, but he's never changed shells. There were a couple of other crabs as well, but I assume they died. I did a little research and was planning on getting a 10 gallon aquarium, adding sand deep enough for the crab to bury itself, adding some sloped items for it to climb on, and something with a little more water for it to have a little 'pool (just to stand, not to swim).
Any advice is welcome. I didn't find out until today when I was heading out the door that she spritzed him daily. So he hasn't been spritzed in two days. I'm worried he won't make it in the leaf litter, even if I spritz it, until Friday when I can get the aquarium set up.
Any advice is welcome. I didn't find out until today when I was heading out the door that she spritzed him daily. So he hasn't been spritzed in two days. I'm worried he won't make it in the leaf litter, even if I spritz it, until Friday when I can get the aquarium set up.