HCA: Hermit Crab Association

My pp's keep changing/swapping shells which has left me w/little clue as to which one is which I have been able to identify some of them due to size & sex but I'm not sure even on those I would imagine a lot of you experience this same problem, esp those of you w/large #'s of crabs. What do you do, give up trying to keep track of who's who? Is there some way for me to keep track despite the shell swapping? I hate not being sure of which crab is which

Sometimes their eyes can identify them. One of my crabs has red eyes and that's how I keep track of her. Color is also another way. I only have 7 crabs though and mine surprisingly don't change shells too often. I just thought of another way though. Maybe if you know a crab hasn't molted in a long time, you can tell by the black nail and how worn down it is, as to a fresh molter who has a very sharp black nail...
I don't know, it's pretty hard.

I've got nearly two dozen I can ID on sight, and the rest are just "that crab". I used to feel guilty, but after spending an entire day sorting out who was who and then waking up the next morning to realize that they hadn't change shells, they had swapped shells, and I was back to square one again, I gave up. They molt so often, and come up looking so different, and so many of them look alike that it's not a bad thing to not be able to do it. (And this is coming from someone who could remember all 400+ cats in the shelter system at any given time on sight, and still manage to remember all the previous cats who had been through as well!) Hermit crabs can be clones of each other - it's not something to ever feel bad about.

I only have a couple I know by name, but it's hard keeping track and now I just enjoy watching them without really knowing who is who.

Thanks, it's nice to see I'm not the only one I guess the names don't matter so much when you love all of them anyway

I only have 3 for now, so it's pretty easy. Johann and Pyotr have similar shells, but Johann is redder and Pyotr is really purple. Antonio is in a darker shell, so as long as they all three don't change at the same time, I'm okay. But should I ever have too many to know who is who, I think they will have a colony name. Not Roanoak, though. I don't want them disappearing.

We have 17 and keep trying to name them but it is pretty impossible. Two of my kids don't care but my 9 year old son is not happy that he can't tell which ones are his. He has one last one still in the painted shell and I think when he changes I might actually see tears. Everyday he looks in the tank to check on just that one.

i am not very creative with names, but I thought about naming them Katniss, Peeta, Haymitch, Cinna, Primrose and Finnick from the Hunger Games. In the end my son said no and we named them after Avatar The Last Airbender.

I have seven and I can tell each one apart by their coloring, eyes, shell, size and personality. Each crab acts a little different and if you really look at them you can definitely tell who is who. I have 2 small crabs, that look pretty much identical except for their personalities. One is super friendly and will treadmill hands for a good 5 minutes before stopping and the other zoops into her shell and doesn't come out for a few minutes, and then is very skiddish. Their names are Myrtle and Marcel Then I have a small one thats a little bigger than those 2, she has her own little personality but her size most of the time gives her away. Her name is Rosie, she's slightly crazy. I have 2 medium (ish) crabs, one is molting right now (Lily) and the other is always super friendly and sweet (Lola). THEN, I have 2 large crabs. Herm and Monti are in different tanks, because Herm is in the ISO tank because that bugger has been showing signs of molting for a few weeks now. They look completely different. Monti is a big baby, he is scared of EVERYTHING and he lies on his back most of the time and Herm is the sweetest crab ever. He's my first adoptee and the crab that started this whole hobby. He oddly likes to cuddle into the crook of your arm (so does Lola). :]

Wow, ramble much... anyway my point was that you can tell by a lot of different things, keep track of shells, sizes, gender, eyes, coloring and also another good thing would to look at their toes and see if they have the black claws or not. Might be able to tell who's who with those sorts of things :]

I should probably have said that I can tell the crabs that are up apart - I know from day to day which crab is which. But I have no idea which one is the original "Echo" or "Sierra" or "Vinny" that I got three years ago. I can't back-track on them to figure out which one was brought home on which day, even though I took extensive ID photos of them while I still knew who they were.

Also, they change personalities with molts. Just because you have a friendly crab now doesn't mean it will behave that way once it molts. Makes it all that more difficult to keep track of them when you've got 10 of them down at once, switching shells and growing!

wodesorel wrote:I should probably have said that I can tell the crabs that are up apart - I know from day to day which crab is which. But I have no idea which one is the original "Echo" or "Sierra" or "Vinny" that I got three years ago. I can't back-track on them to figure out which one was brought home on which day, even though I took extensive ID photos of them while I still knew who they were.

Also, they change personalities with molts. Just because you have a friendly crab now doesn't mean it will behave that way once it molts. Makes it all that more difficult to keep track of them when you've got 10 of them down at once, switching shells and growing!

THANK YOU! Not only that but the ID photos, i took them as well, lose their usefulness since some of the identifying marks changes w/their molts also :roll: It has gotten so frustrating that I just refer to them as "who I think is..." I have sexed each one, gone back thru pictures, tried to tell by size...everything, it's just not gonna happen. So I'm at the point where i'm happy just loving them whatever their name was

I've found the marks to stay the same even after molts. I'm not sure if they are the same after a leg/claw is lost and they have to regenerate it. I'm trying to get a good enough picture of Sparky's new legs and claws to figure it out.

I spent three hours once looking at photos of Goji's ID pics from the two and a half years as I know exactly who he is. Even after photoshopping the pics so they were the same size, or using paint to mark just the dimples to look for patterns, the marks has changed after every one of his molts. It might work for some, but certainly not for all.

I am dying for the moment when everyone realizes that crabs, like humans, are not all alike ...they don't all like the same things, behave the same way, molt at the same rate, etc. Sorry, I'm a bit crabby myself today

Yet we are all alike too, just like the crabs