HCA: Hermit Crab Association

My hubby just told me that this morning he found 1 of my crabs on top of the plexiglass top. He said that he was trying to get back into the tank back through the hole. Hubby said he had to twist the shell around just right to get it back through.

We have 1" holes drilled on the 4 corners of the plexi-glass. I thought that was too small for their shells to make it through the holes. I was very wrong. So tonight I will be making the holes smaller by adding some tape across half the hole. Unless someone has some better way of sealing them up.

You could buy a screen lid to put underneath your plexiglass one. It will help keeps the crabs in and you can still keep your holes the same size for ventilation. Depending on the size of your tank, you can usually get one pretty cheap, about 15$ or so.

Keep in mind that a motivated crab could ditch its shell to get through a hole. Not a really good plan since they need the shell, but still. I'd keep the holes pretty small and just have more of them.

For right now I put a small extra piece of plex-glass over the back holes, until I can get another lid drilled.

I can only find 1 crab. Hopefully the other one is under the sand. From the side glass I see a small hole down in the sand. Looks like an ant hole.

While on this forum my dog was in the back room barking. Got up to see what she was barking at. Behold it was my other hermit, he did get out. He is ok, thanks goodness. Hopefully he will continue to do good.

Escape of the hermits!!!!!

So glad the dog found your hermie When my brother and I had hermies as kids,we got home from school and one of ours was missing. Then we heard the cat under my brothers bed playing with something. There was the crab being batted back and forth between the cats paws. How the cat got in the tank and got the crab we will never know!

This was 20+ yrs ago before knowing even half what we know now about crabs, we had no lid on the tank, but the tank was very tall and was on a custom shelf. A light was on the bottom of the shelf above it so there wasn't much room between the top rim of the tank and the bottom of the next shelf. We had to pull the tank out so far just to clean it. So how a cat with no front claws got that crab out had to take some creativity! Plus there was no climbing items in the tank so can't blame the crab lol

Some cats have been known to sqeeze into some pretty tight places. But thats wild! Hope the crab was ok.

Yeah the crab was fine. The 2 or 3 we had lived with us for 3 or 4 years I guess. And with all I've learned here, I think to myself HOW DID THEY LIVE THAT LONG!!!! LOL

I picked a hermie off the underside of the tank lid this morning. He was holding on to the hinge and had somehow managed to climb all the way to the other end of the hinge from the only thing he could have used to climb up.

I never thought they could get through the holes with shell, but they did. We drilled another lid with smaller holes & put the holes closer to center. Hopefully this will keep them in. The crab that got out is still doing good.

Oh my gosh that's just too cute. I'm sure my crabs will do the same someday - I don't have a plexiglass lid, I have a metal screen lid with a book on one side where their hemp net is.

I'm glad to hear you were able to adjust by making smaller holes. I'm learning FAST that hermit crabs are sneaky, smart little guys! Hope your solution works for you!

Well, somehow my biggest crab escaped a few days ago. I found it underneath the tank stand, huddled in the corner. Was no way it could have gotten through the smaller holes. I think it pushed up on the plexi-glass & got out. So now I make sure to weigh the plexi down.