HCA: Hermit Crab Association

Hi, I'm Amanda and my family and I are fairly new to the world of hermit crabs. We rescued one about five months ago and just a few days ago were able to add two new friends who promptly buried themselves and have yet to resurface. We have outfitted a 10 gal for them and are already looking to upgrade them as soon as I can find room for a bigger tank. I look forward to learning as much as I can about these little guys and meeting others who can help me along the way.

Welcome to LHC! This is my favorite forum and the only one I'm ever on regularly - off and on. It's good to check out the rest but in my humble opinion this one is the best!!

Welcome to the world of hermit crabs!

Welcome, Amanda! I'm a newbie too and have learned so much already...everyone here is great!

Welcome! If you need any help feel free to pm me or any one of the members!

welcome i to am kinda new to is all as well.

Welcome! I just got my 3 a week ago Friday, so I'm new too but have learned SO much on here!

May the force be with you (and your crabs!)

Thanks for the welcome everyone! I have learned so much just reading the different posts. One of my new ones has resurfaced and switched from the painted shell he was in to a natural shell. Patiently waiting on the second one to make a showing. I do have one question. The three I have are still pretty small. Shell openings for all three are only about 1/2 to 3/4 of an inch. Currently the 10 gal tank seems to be working. At what size do they absolutly need to be bumped up to a larger tank? I currently have a snake in a 20 long who is going to need to bump up in tank size in about a year and was looking to move the hermits to that tank. Any idea if they will be okay in the 10 gal that long?

Probably when they're wearing shells the size of a ping-pong ball or larger or if you have more than 3 crabs...but I wouldn't worry too much now.

For a ten gallon your looking at a maximum size of fifty cent size, golf ball(being medium in size) is pushing it especially for three as the space required by crabs golf ball size and up is really more than a ten gallon can comfortably provide.For mediums you'll need a minimum substrate depth of six inches and thats a little over half the depth of a ten gallon aquarium which means you wont have much overhead room.It's not recommended to put hermitcrabs in an enclosure that has housed reptiles since reptile feces contain microbes and bacteria that literally destroy blood cells so the 20gal currently occupied by the snake will have to be sterilized with either a weak bleach solution being three parts water to one part bleach or a dilute vinegar and water mix of about half water and half vinegar.Remember to thoroughly rinse the tank after disinfecting, you may want to rinse three or more times to be sure and allow it to air dry for a minimum of 72hrs to make sure that the fumes have completely dissipated.

I will definately clean the tank with some bleach water and let it air dry. I do that with any of the decor I have for the snakes when its deep clean time for them. We will make sure they get bumped up when they need to. We don't plan on adding any new crabs anytime soon just to make sure they are not overcrowded. We picked up a bag of sea shells at the dollar store and got a few nice crab shells out of it. My daughter has fallen in love with the rest of the shells. One was a good sizes half clam shell I was going to use as an extra food dish. We boiled everything in water for 5 minutes. Just wanted to make sure this was long enough before we added them to the tank. Thanks again for all of the advice!