HCA: Hermit Crab Association

So I know crabs like to push and flick eachother to establish pecking order and all... but how hard are these flicks supposed to be? My large crab basically punched my medium one with his bp and sent her back a few inches. I've also seen him flick her off of branches numerous times, seemingly quite hard. Should I be worried about this? I feel so bad when I see her get knocked around like that, but does it actually hurt her? I don't really notice any actual harm done to her. Actually she walked back up to him after being knocked back, but man do I get scared. I hope this is just standard pecking order behavior and not true aggression. Besides this I've never seen him do anything else that I would find aggressive like grabbing onto her or anything.

I had a large once who did the same kind of thing. If food was just placed in the dish and the crabs would come out of the woodwork to eat, my big girl would lumber up to the dish, pick up any crabs in the dish and toss them. Actually throw them out, settle herself on the dish like a duck on a nest, and proceed to eat everything. I actually started putting two dishes in for food, just so the little ones could eat.

I'm sure those crabs don't care for being tossed around, however sometimes those hard exos come in handy, I don't think she's really likely to get hurt from this. In my tank with dominance displays and antisocial behavior as long as one crab submits I don't worry about it. Its when one doesn't want to back down that I get concerned, and put them in their separate corners.

Grabbing onto is when you need to worry. I've seen it happen once (I've got a video of it somewhere), and it was a huge E with a smaller one and had I not intervened I have no doubt the big guy would have ripped the smaller one right out of his shell.

It's not fun to watch, but that shoving really is how they establish a pecking order. At some point the losing crab will catch on that it has to wait it's turn, or move out of the way. A dominant crab can be a real jerkface, but it's how they do things.

I also agree with landlubber that having two of things when you have a really sassy crab in the tank is a good way to diffuse tension. A crab can't be everywhere at once, and I found that it calmed them down when they could no longer bully the other crabs. If it was in one dish, they went to the other. If it was in one hide, they used the other.

And a lot of the time with newer crabs, it's a hold over from when they were either competing for resources in the wild, or while they were in holding at the warehouses. They seem to learn over time they don't need to be as greedy with food, shelter or shells as it's always going to be available.

One of the funniest things I ever saw was my biggest E being a jerk to my smallest one. She was walking along and he runs up to her and takes his fat leg and flips her into a hole she was near. I managed to get pictures. She climbed out, ran up to him waving her feelers around like she was telling him off and then left to go about her business.

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