HCA: Hermit Crab Association

Hello everyone! My name's Elizabeth and I've loved animals my whole life. I was able to convince my not very enthusiastic mom to let me have hamsters and a rabbit when I was younger and in high school she let me get cats. Then late in my freshman year of college after a set of biology class experiments there were a few hermit crabs that needed a new home. Since they were free I decided to take one. I named him Heix (I actually have no idea if it's a male or female) and I'm pretty sure he's a PP.I knew nothing about caring for hermit crabs so I got online and found hermit-crabs.com. I learned quite a bit about what I was doing wrong and went to PetsMart that weekend to fix it as best as I could. Unfortunately I didn't have a lot of money or room in my dorm so I could only get him a slightly larger Kritter Karrier and I didn't have room for both kinds of water, but he had a bit more room, lots of eco-earth to bury in, and I was able to keep the temperature and humidity up so things were a little better. As soon as I got home for the summer I fixed everything else.I found this website through hermit-crabs.com and learned how to make a proper habitat for Helix. I still don't have a lot of room so I only bought a 10-gallon tank, but it's much better than what he had. He's got both kinds of water, more room, a little second level, a more varied diet, and I bought him a little friend that I named Dome (I'm not sure what kind of crab Dome is or, again, if it's a boy or girl). They both disappeared under the sand about a week after I introduced them to their new tank and have been hiding for a little over a month now so I'm hoping they'll come back up soon. I've been a part of this site since May, but I hadn't been posting anything because all my questions had been answered by older discussions. I thought I should introduce myself and my little friends though and try to be a little more active on the forum. So hello again! And thank you for all the wonderful information you guys have provided!

Hey elizabeth, welcome aboard!

On behalf of the staff here at LHC.com welcome to the forum and the family.Sounds like your doing pretty good so far with your new ten gallon setup and yes it is completely normal behavior for newly purchased hermitcrabs to go down to molt or de-stress on the first day or very soon after being introduced to a new tank and one month is the recommended iso period for new hermits anyway so the little guys did this for you self imposed.All you need to worry about at this point is maintaining the fresh and salt water and being vigilant with keeping fresh new foods coming daily at least just in case one of them decides to pop up for a quick snack better safe than sorry.If you have any questions please feel free to ask as that is what this site is here for.