HCA: Hermit Crab Association

Hey guys!

I've recently moved my crab Romulus into a 10gal, and he's seemed to love it- he's pretty active, has been visibly eating, climbs a lot, even dug a little hole for fun. But for the past few days, when he's not roaming around, he's sitting out in the open- except he's tilted on his back a little bit. It looks strange and it's kind of freaking me out, even though nothing APPEARS to be wrong with him. Do hermit crabs sometimes rest like that?

I also found him hanging upside down from the roof of his tank today, which was a first for me to witness. I was wondering why the plastic wrap kept ending up hanging down into the tank completely, and now I know why... he ripped it away to hang on the ceiling. I'm assuming that's okay? Seems he's having a bit too much fun.

EDIT: Before he was kind of out of his shell, but now he's sleeping tilted back because he retracted all the way in.

How are your conditions? Temperature, humidity, air flow? Deep enough/moist enough substrate? Deep enough fresh water and marine salt water dishes for the crab to submerge?

Does it kinda look like he's trying to sit on his legs? Mine every once and a while will just sit so it looks like they're trying to do a hand stand or something. Not for very long mind you, but they do that. And yeah its normal for them to hang from the lid, mine use to do nose dives off the top into the water dish. I would move the plastic wrap to the outside of the tank though. Just to be safe.

I think mine sit like that sometimes. Does it look like a dog begging with his legs sticking out a little in front?

DragonsFly wrote:How are your conditions? Temperature, humidity, air flow? Deep enough/moist enough substrate? Deep enough fresh water and marine salt water dishes for the crab to submerge?

Temp is around 75-80, Humidity around 80, substrate is deep and sandcastle consistency, water dishes are fine.

hermitmommy wrote:I think mine sit like that sometimes. Does it look like a dog begging with his legs sticking out a little in front?

Yeah that sounds about right.

See, the thing is, he's acting perfectly normal- actually, better than he's ever acted. Active during the night and for a portion of the day, eats, naps out in the open like I described on his back a bit, but also in his cocohut- and he doesn't ALWAYS sit tilted back, but maybe 50% of the time for the past few days. I don't think there's anything wrong, but it's a behavior shift I just wanted to be sure of.

I think its just their way of getting comfy. Sometimes they need to balance a certain way, or maybe they want a certain amount of fresh air. I'm not too worried about it.

Okay, good.

Now I'm just waiting to wake up to him hanging from the ceiling again. I joked with my friend about him thinking he's a bat. (Also, I did move the plastic wrap to the outside of the tank, so he can climb all he wants now!)

hehe wait until he wakes you up in the middle of the night cause he nose dives from the top. Mine use to do that all the time to me. Gave me a hard attack the first time it happened. I'm sure your guy's fine, like mommy said, he's probably just getting comfy.

I actually saw him climbing all over the top of the ceiling last night- had to put in my earplugs to sleep.

I even grabbed a picture with my phone:



I sure hope he doesn't nosedive while I'm awake, I will probably scream. Haha.