Buried crabs

[CrabbahN.E.]

Hi all,I am new to this forum and have had my crabs about six weeks now.I have five one jumbo three medium and two small in a twenty gallon aquarium. They have fresh water,salt water,food all changed daily.humidity at 78 temp at 75 . I assumed temp too low from previous reading got a temp light now temp at 82. Question is,all crabs but 1 buried themselves and don't come out this is going on two weeks. Proper temp one day now.is that normal or a wait and see thing because of low temp? I had a successful surface molt from one small two weeks in if that means anything

[DragonsFly]

If they are Purple Pinchers, 75 degrees F is fine for temperature. Anything over 75 degrees and over 75 humidity is good for them. We like to recommend "80 and 80," but you don't have to have it spot-on all the time, and a natural variation of warmer in the day time and cooler at night is more natural to them than constant 80/80 anyway. Somewhat warmer temperatures can encourage them to be more active, but remember they are nocturnal and naturally spend a lot of time hidden or underground during the day, as well as spending long periods of time underground molting on a regular basis. (Crab-keeping is full of excellent opportunities to develop the virtue of patience.)

If you have had them for five weeks, they have probably all gone down to try to molt. Being "harvested" from the wild and abused into captivity is extremely stressful (and often injurious) to them, so they usually do go down pretty quickly as soon as they can (as soon as they have proper conditions and good enough substrate to do so). They might be down for days, weeks, or months. If one of them is really a jumbo, it could be down for many months. (However, I hope it isn't really, because your twenty gallon is really not big enough for a jumbo (they need very deep substrate).

Whatever you do, do not get more crabs because you are bored looking at an "empty" tank; new crabs will surely dig down and very likely encounter your molters and kill and/or cannibalize them. Five is a gracious plenty to keep successfully, anyway, and especially if one is a jumbo you already need a bigger tank, just for those 5.

Please bear in mind that if your jumbo was bought from a store, and therefore was taken from the wild at that size, they usually do not adjust very well to captivity and often die (more often than smaller sizes, who also often die within the first few weeks or months because of "PPS"--Post-Purchase Syndrome--basically, they have just been traumatized too much from being taken from their wild homes, handled violently, shipped around, etc.). I don't mean to sound all "gloom and doom," it's just good to be prepared so you don't blame yourself if you have actually done all you can to give them the best chance, but they still don't make it.

Just keep your temperature and humidity correct; substrate "sandcastle" moist, not dry or soggy, and keep food and water fresh since you never know when they will come up. While you are waiting is a great time to read all the care sheets and other info here in order to learn all you can to keep providing them the best captive life they can have. It's also fun to look around for ideas about how to improve their crabitat (although best not to actually make many changes while they are under--you don't want to collapse their burrows--just make plans). Best wishes!

[CrabbahN.E.]

Thanks for your help! I have 7 inches of substrate in it 4/1 playsand e.e. Combo. the tank is 17 inches from top to bottom. I am planning on getting a bigger tank soon.i didn't expect to be so interested in these awesome little creatures. I bought one for my girlfriend for Christmas in one of those tiny little plastic enclosures , did some reading online and realized everything I bought, container, calcicand etc and advice at store was horrendously wrong and ended up dropping a lot more money to put everything right. I do believe it is my responsibility to provide the best home possible for them. Just glad I had the extra money to get it done. It is sad how badly the stores treat them between environment, painted shells and overall lack of knowledge from staff at stores.all the good info I go was from reading online. Very little came from the half dozen stores I have been in. I just hope with time they will start to come up more.i feel bad for the one crab that is all alone up top when his friends are hiding. I am pretty sure one is define ly ready to molt because his exo is that ashy grey color on his thorax and some upper legs. The coloring on others seem normal. If one dies under will I smell it if I remove the cover. Also should I wait till they all are up before transferring to a bigger tank?

[DragonsFly]

If you actually have a jumbo, the general recommendation is that you need 18 inches of substrate. That means you probably need a 90g tank at least. I highly recommend, while the crabs are molting, looking around on Craigslist and other places like that for second-hand tanks. You can also ask at a pet or fish store for "leakers"--crab tanks don't have to be able to hold water, so a leaking tank is fine as long as there isn't any broken glass and it will hold moist substrate. Another thing to check is Freecycle; sometimes people get tired of their fish tanks and will actually let you have them for free if you will just come and get it (I got a 55g and stand that way). The etiquette on Freecycle is that you should at least offer one thing before asking for what you want, though. But those are some ideas for cheaper sources of large tanks.

Do not feel bad for the one crab that is up while the others are under. They are well aware of the presence of other crabs, and don't get "lonely" or "bored" the way people do. As long as your conditions are good (keep reading the care sheets and other info here, there is no place better to learn how to keep these challenging creatures), just practice patience.

While they are all under is a good time to set up and balance a new tank. The larger the tank, the longer it takes to get the temperature and humidity balanced (hint: moisten your substrate with pre-warmed water, that helps a lot, because otherwise it takes forever for the substrate to warm up!). As soon as the new tank is balanced and holding good conditions, it is fine to transfer each crab to the new tank as it comes up from molting, you don't have to wait until they all come up. You should NOT dig up a molter, though; let them come up on their own. Disturbing a molter can kill it.

With respect to how long they might take, again it could be days, weeks, or months. The time it takes is roughly associated with the size of the crab, but not always directly. If one of your crabs is a jumbo, generally it will take more like months. One long-term crabber here posted that one of her jumbos came up after 18 months. I have one that has been under almost a year now, and I'm not going to worry about him until at least next fall! (Again, if the jumbo was wild-caught at that size, it is much less likely to survive in captivity at all than the smaller ones, but if he does, his molts will tend to be much longer in duration than the smaller ones.)

As for whether you would know if one were to die underground--maybe or maybe not. With only 7 inches of substrate, probably you would smell it eventually--although if the other crabs find the dead one, they may "take care of it" for you, and you'll eventually just find the abandoned shell and perhaps some leftover exo underground when you decide to do a deep clean.

And yes, the whole trade in "pet hermit crabs" is despicable. They are wild animals, and the vast majority of them die before they ever reach the store to be sold as "pets"; the vast majority of THOSE die in the first few weeks or months, either from PPS (post-purchase syndrome, meaning they were just too traumatized and injured from being abused into captivity to survive) or from being kept in conditions that slowly suffocate or poison them (because pet stores give incorrect information about them). In the mean time, we have no idea what kind of damage it is doing to their fragile island ecosystems to have an important "janitor" species being removed by the thousands. It's pretty horrible, all the way around. But now that you have them, it's good that you are committed to giving them the best chance for the best captive life they can have.

[DragonsFly]

Oh--and about this: "I just hope with time they will start to come up more."

Bear in mind that crabs are nocturnal--just one more reason why they really do not make good "pets." If you keep good conditions, there may be some times that they are active during the day for a while, but generally, they stay hidden or burrowed under during the day anyway, and then they will regularly spend days, weeks, and eventually months underground molting. Often, I only know that ours are up and around because food and water disappears, substrate is disturbed, etc. As one of the long-term crabbers here memorably said against buying them for kids: "Yay! A 'pet' you will never see! That's sure to keep your kid interested."

Crab-keeping can be appealing to some people, especially those who enjoy complicated problem-solving-- responding to the challenge of trying to keep these creatures with somewhat complicated needs in captivity as an interesting problem (or rather, ever-continuing series of problems). But if you were thinking of getting a "fun, easy-care pet," as pet stores often present them, then of course you've already found out that that is a complete lie. Thank you for caring enough to find out what they really need, and to try to provide that for them.

[CrabbahN.E.]

Realizing the disappearing act is normal behavior puts my mind at ease. I am frequently up past midnight and typically get up once also so I often watch the one that is up and about. I didn't expect it to be easy to take care of them. My girlfriend mentioned she had two in the past and would like to have some again, so I did expect after getting them that she would take over the primary caregiver role but she doesn't seem to have an interest in that so although I bought them for her I feel like they are actually mine. She feels like they don't need so much work although all data says otherwise and I expend too much effort overall. I admit I am a bit obsessive but I think that works to their benefit if I am making the right choices.

[DragonsFly]

It is a very common misconception that they "don't need so much work." People who hold this view also usually believe that they "don't live very long." They buy them as "throw-away pets," believing (often being told by pet store personnel, who, to be fair, are not lying on purpose, they just don't know any better) that they naturally only live for a few months to a year, and they only need some dry sand, "hermit glub" water offered in small shells, and some commercially-prepared food. As a result, the "don't live very long" notion gets confirmed, since sure enough, they die after a few weeks or months. But the truth is that these animals certainly live for decades in the wild, and have been known to live for over 30 years in captivity. If they "don't live very long" in captivity, it's because they are slowly suffocating from lack of humidity or being poisoned by additives in the commercial food, or because conditions don't allow for molting, so they eventually die from not being able to molt.

The first two crabs that came to us had been kept in the "recommended" desert-like conditions (in a KK) for months. The owner was extremely careful to keep the 1/2 inch of sand substrate AS DRY AS POSSIBLE, believing that it would be unhealthy if spilled water was allowed to stay in the sand. No heat was provided. It is astonishing that they survived (probably they only survived because it was pretty humid during that time, and they were big enough to maintain their shell moisture and put off molting--but not so big that they couldn't adjust to captivity at all).

This owner was not unintelligent, or a young child--she was a conscientious college student who really thought that she was doing the right thing, carefully following the care instructions she had received with the crabs. She also had been told that these were animals bred for captivity (at that time, there was no such thing; even now only a VERY few people have been able to successfully raise hermit crabs from eggs in captivity, and that with absolutely heroic efforts on their part). In short, she thought they were quiet, "easy-care" "pet" animals that would be ideal to keep in college. The only reason we ended up with them is that she found out that they were in fact not allowed in the dorm. Otherwise, she would have continued to keep them, and almost certainly they would have died in the winter months as the dry heated air suffocated them (if they didn't die before that from being unable to molt). When they did die, she would have simply thought that they had lived out their natural life span, as she had been told they "didn't live very long." In fact, that was a major reason for buying them--so she and her roommate could have some "pets" in their room, just for the school year, which they did not expect would live any longer than that, so they wouldn't have to worry about what to do with them after that.

My point is that there is a lot of misinformation out there, and even intelligent and well-meaning people can be completely mistaken, because the truth about these animals is frankly difficult and unpleasant, so people with an interest in making money from them are not motivated to make the truth known. Again, I do not blame the store personnel who spread the misinformation--as far as they know, they are telling the truth--I blame the people "up the food chain," who exploit the trade in wild animals to make money, not caring about the cost to the animals or the delicate ecosystems they come from.

Finally, it's a good thing you don't mind caring for them. A take-home lesson from your situation is that it is generally a bad idea to buy any kind of animal for another person as a gift. Although somebody might mention that they would "like to have" such-and-such an animal, if they don't already have it at this time, there's a reason. Maybe it isn't the right time, maybe they realize they have other priorities that need to take precedence, or maybe it's the kind of thing they just think might be nice but don't really want to have to deal with the actual realities of keeping them--or maybe they even just said that on the spur of the moment and didn't mean much of anything by it. Anyway, as anyone experienced in animal rescue would tell you, live animals are a poor gift choice; there's just too many ways it can end badly (both for the animals and for the people). These animals in particular would be a kind of scary gift, since by giving them to someone else you are committing that person to expensive and somewhat challenging care, for potentially decades. Most people probably would balk at that, at least a bit. I'm glad you are taking the trouble for these guys. Best wishes!

[DragonsFly]

Sorry; I've already gone on and on, but I also wanted to add this ray of hope: although it is a very steep "learning curve" at first, and a lot of trouble to balance a tank and get it stabilized and your small group of crabs living safely and stably together--once you have that DONE, there isn't a great deal of work and trouble (except for the occasional crisis that you can never predict). You get into a routine of food and water changes, etc., and then they frankly do best if you just leave them alone.

It is getting it all set up to begin with that is a lot of trouble, and then recognizing the potentially very long term commitment, and planning ahead for providing for their increasingly-expensive needs as they get much bigger (large tank, large water sources, large shells--if all five of your crabs survive to be jumbos, you will eventually need 20 jumbo shells, which--since they can run you $12 or more apiece, could end up costing $240 just for those shells), and then dealing with, as I said, the occasional crisis.

All of which, of course, the pet store says zip-all about.

If, after educating yourself about all this, you decide it's more than you really want to take on, don't feel bad, because (like our first rescue crabs' owner), there was no reasonable way you could have known everything that would be involved beforehand (that's one reason for the Adoptions forum). But for those people who find all this worthwhile over the long haul. . . well, I'm only about six years in and don't count myself among that number; I'll let the truly long-term crabbers speak for themselves. Again, studying the info here on this forum is the best way to learn all you can know about caring for these creatures in captivity.