HCA: Hermit Crab Association

My oldest hermit crab with me. I got him (I assume the crab's male - no discernible gonopores and currently I can't see the pleopods) back in November 10, 2011.

Here are pics I took of him November 19, 2011 (thank goodness for the auto-dates being saved in the old files .)





And now here he is:



Here he is with that same old shell from the above pics. I think his big claw now is bigger than his whole little self back when I first got him. :



And here he is climbing up my arm, trying to avoid being photographed. He can now easily straddle my wrist in contrast when I first bought him, when, looking back at the old pics, I think he could only wrap his legs around my pinky.



Love the big fella

Aw how awesome! He's so big now! I got my crab Beau in June of 2012, so he's also 8+ years old. Your guy looks bigger than Beau though!

Sent from my Moto G (5) Plus using Tapatalk

Wow! Beautiful.

CrabbyLover77 wrote: ↑

Sat Aug 08, 2020 9:40 pm

Aw how awesome! He's so big now! I got my crab Beau in June of 2012, so he's also 8+ years old. Your guy looks bigger than Beau though!

Sent from my Moto G (5) Plus using Tapatalk

Thank you very much.

Hermiesguardian wrote: ↑

Sat Aug 08, 2020 11:00 pm

Wow! Beautiful.

Thank you very much.

Sent from my Moto G (5) Plus using Tapatalk

Wow!

What a big beautiful guy! I have one that is about 8, well he’ll be 9 this year but I adopted him so I don’t have any pictures of him like that to be able to compare, I wish I did. It’s so awesome seeing them do so well. Congratulations on having him for so long, he is beautiful!


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

He's amazing. I love seeing the size difference between a couple years, its crazy to see how much they grow!

Sent from my SM-G935F using Tapatalk

Gorgeous!

HappyHermit0916 wrote: ↑

Wed Aug 12, 2020 2:34 pm

Wow!

Thanx

RiNiKy506 wrote: ↑

Wed Aug 12, 2020 7:44 pm

What a big beautiful guy! I have one that is about 8, well he’ll be 9 this year but I adopted him so I don’t have any pictures of him like that to be able to compare, I wish I did. It’s so awesome seeing them do so well. Congratulations on having him for so long, he is beautiful!


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Thank you very much. "Young Nastyman!" (the exclamation point is part of the name, sorry about that ) will also be nine with me this upcoming Nov. 10, but he'll be most likely buried under again (either brumating or molting or both) as he's been doing every year's end since I first had him, so I decided to take and post pics now before he buries under.

He's the oldest land hermit crab to live with me for this long and the biggest growth and growth rate of any previous crab I've taken care since the many, many years of crabbing (my previous record was 4 years for two C. brevimanus, but I had to adopt them out...long story). I had so many pass away so needlessly, reading so much bad advice about hermit keeping, until I encountered HCA back in 2007.

I'm hoping to keep him as long as Carol Ormes has Jonathan L. Crab, if not longer. On a side note, when over ten years ago, Jonathan Livingston Crab was 30 years old and Kate passed away, I thought Jonathan would soon shortly follow; I had not expected, over 10 years later, to hear and see on youtube that Jonathan Crab is still alive, over 40 years. Who would've thought?

aussieJJDude wrote: ↑

Thu Aug 13, 2020 4:23 am

He's amazing. I love seeing the size difference between a couple years, its crazy to see how much they grow!

Sent from my SM-G935F using Tapatalk

Yup, it's amazing indeed. Sometimes I take the fact for granted the fact that so many years have passed and that the shell I bought him with which he came doesn't fit him any more and is about the size of his big claw nowadays. Kinda like people; one moment they're little kids waiting for the next episode of Adventure Time, then BAM, next moment they're off to college. Wow...has it been that long...........

GotButterflies wrote: ↑

Thu Aug 13, 2020 12:07 pm

Gorgeous!

Thank you.

Update: I scrounged through my hard drive to post some more of the pics I took over the years -

May 23, 2012 I believe this is after a second molt with the same shell when I first bought him.



May 29, 2012 after a shell change.



June 15, 2012


June 18, 2012 eating a rose hibiscus blossom.




September 9, 2012


Then a video of him walking in the hamster wheel (no audio) taken in June 29, 2016. A minute long. Click on pic to see.