Biggest shell opening?

[123AE]

This was the shell I got tom in and now he is bigger than my hand (I have pretty small hands)


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[soilentgringa]

The average crab owner will never need anything more than a 2 inch opening, and even that is pushing it. Most crabs will choose to stay in smaller shells with their legs hanging out rather than have to lug around a huge and heavy shell that fits them to what we think is perfect.

purpleperson, keep in mind that the shell he's wearing is an oval opening - which means while it measures bigger than a turbo it has much less room for their butt in the back because of the way it's shaped. He'd be swimming in a Jade turbo with the same opening size, but the shell would also weigh a lot more and probably wouldn't be worth the trade off for the extra energy needed to lug it around.

In theory - yes - a full grown wild-caught PP could take a shell opening up to 3 or 4 inches, but I doubt very many would want to. Shell weight versus fit has been well studied for years and while a shell may fit them better, they will pass it over if it means it takes them too much energy to lift and carry. Energy takes food and it takes away from what they can store up for molting.

That said, I have a shell in my collection from a lovely lady who said that her last late crab was wearing it before he died. It has around a 3 inch opening. I've always kind of questioned that myself, but it's a carved shell and wasn't very heavy so maybe it's the truth. The largest jumbos I've seen in person (wild caught, as ones in captivity never reach that size) could have fit into it but had zero interest. I think the largest shell I've had a PP willingly take was a huge magpie with probably a 2.5 inch opening that a member here mailed to me just for him, and even then his legs stuck out a bit. He was insanely bulky though, like a weight lifter. (And for anyone thinking jumbos are awesome - please know that not a single crab of mine that I've talked about here survived through their first molt in captivity. The big guys do not have the ability to adapt after being collected.)

I don't think that it's right that a possibly 30 year old animal is took out of its home and put into a tank that is so much smaller than the wild equivalent. The only way I ever can justify buying an animal that is wild caught is because some animals have incredibly low survival rate in the wild however jumbos don't really have any natural predators so there is not any reason to take the them unless you know that you're probably the only chance that that animal has for survival and I'm sure that you took much better care than anyone else could. Dont know why I'm saying this because you have been keeping hermit crabs for longer than I've been alive but basically I'm trying to agree that jumbos belong in the wild unless they've been raised from their baby stages. Also do you think indos would prefer jade turbos due to their huge claw size.


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All the hermit crabs that are available for purchase are wild caught...

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[123AE]

The average crab owner will never need anything more than a 2 inch opening, and even that is pushing it. Most crabs will choose to stay in smaller shells with their legs hanging out rather than have to lug around a huge and heavy shell that fits them to what we think is perfect.

purpleperson, keep in mind that the shell he's wearing is an oval opening - which means while it measures bigger than a turbo it has much less room for their butt in the back because of the way it's shaped. He'd be swimming in a Jade turbo with the same opening size, but the shell would also weigh a lot more and probably wouldn't be worth the trade off for the extra energy needed to lug it around.

In theory - yes - a full grown wild-caught PP could take a shell opening up to 3 or 4 inches, but I doubt very many would want to. Shell weight versus fit has been well studied for years and while a shell may fit them better, they will pass it over if it means it takes them too much energy to lift and carry. Energy takes food and it takes away from what they can store up for molting.

That said, I have a shell in my collection from a lovely lady who said that her last late crab was wearing it before he died. It has around a 3 inch opening. I've always kind of questioned that myself, but it's a carved shell and wasn't very heavy so maybe it's the truth. The largest jumbos I've seen in person (wild caught, as ones in captivity never reach that size) could have fit into it but had zero interest. I think the largest shell I've had a PP willingly take was a huge magpie with probably a 2.5 inch opening that a member here mailed to me just for him, and even then his legs stuck out a bit. He was insanely bulky though, like a weight lifter. (And for anyone thinking jumbos are awesome - please know that not a single crab of mine that I've talked about here survived through their first molt in captivity. The big guys do not have the ability to adapt after being collected.)

I don't think that it's right that a possibly 30 year old animal is took out of its home and put into a tank that is so much smaller than the wild equivalent. The only way I ever can justify buying an animal that is wild caught is because some animals have incredibly low survival rate in the wild however jumbos don't really have any natural predators so there is not any reason to take the them unless you know that you're probably the only chance that that animal has for survival and I'm sure that you took much better care than anyone else could. Dont know why I'm saying this because you have been keeping hermit crabs for longer than I've been alive but basically I'm trying to agree that jumbos belong in the wild unless they've been raised from their baby stages. Also do you think indos would prefer jade turbos due to their huge claw size.


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All the hermit crabs that are available for purchase are wild caught...

Sent from my LGMS550 using Tapatalk

Yes but wouldn't it be easier on a crab to adjust to life in captivity when it is young and it can grow up and get used to captive life whereas a jumbo is a pretty old large crab that is used to having miles to walk around in comparison to the incredibly small hermit crabs which would be smaller in comparison to the habitat provided (not trying to argue and I am incredibly sorry if it seems like I am)


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[123AE]

The average crab owner will never need anything more than a 2 inch opening, and even that is pushing it. Most crabs will choose to stay in smaller shells with their legs hanging out rather than have to lug around a huge and heavy shell that fits them to what we think is perfect.

purpleperson, keep in mind that the shell he's wearing is an oval opening - which means while it measures bigger than a turbo it has much less room for their butt in the back because of the way it's shaped. He'd be swimming in a Jade turbo with the same opening size, but the shell would also weigh a lot more and probably wouldn't be worth the trade off for the extra energy needed to lug it around.

In theory - yes - a full grown wild-caught PP could take a shell opening up to 3 or 4 inches, but I doubt very many would want to. Shell weight versus fit has been well studied for years and while a shell may fit them better, they will pass it over if it means it takes them too much energy to lift and carry. Energy takes food and it takes away from what they can store up for molting.

That said, I have a shell in my collection from a lovely lady who said that her last late crab was wearing it before he died. It has around a 3 inch opening. I've always kind of questioned that myself, but it's a carved shell and wasn't very heavy so maybe it's the truth. The largest jumbos I've seen in person (wild caught, as ones in captivity never reach that size) could have fit into it but had zero interest. I think the largest shell I've had a PP willingly take was a huge magpie with probably a 2.5 inch opening that a member here mailed to me just for him, and even then his legs stuck out a bit. He was insanely bulky though, like a weight lifter. (And for anyone thinking jumbos are awesome - please know that not a single crab of mine that I've talked about here survived through their first molt in captivity. The big guys do not have the ability to adapt after being collected.)

I don't think that it's right that a possibly 30 year old animal is took out of its home and put into a tank that is so much smaller than the wild equivalent. The only way I ever can justify buying an animal that is wild caught is because some animals have incredibly low survival rate in the wild however jumbos don't really have any natural predators so there is not any reason to take the them unless you know that you're probably the only chance that that animal has for survival and I'm sure that you took much better care than anyone else could. Dont know why I'm saying this because you have been keeping hermit crabs for longer than I've been alive but basically I'm trying to agree that jumbos belong in the wild unless they've been raised from their baby stages. Also do you think indos would prefer jade turbos due to their huge claw size.


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

All the hermit crabs that are available for purchase are wild caught...

Sent from my LGMS550 using Tapatalk

Yes but wouldn't it be easier on a crab to adjust to life in captivity when it is young and it can grow up and get used to captive life whereas a jumbo is a pretty old large crab that is used to having miles to walk around in comparison to the incredibly small hermit crabs which would be smaller in comparison to the habitat provided (not trying to argue and I am incredibly sorry if it seems like I am)


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[soilentgringa]

I don't think that it's right that a possibly 30 year old animal is took out of its home and put into a tank that is so much smaller than the wild equivalent. The only way I ever can justify buying an animal that is wild caught is because some animals have incredibly low survival rate in the wild however jumbos don't really have any natural predators so there is not any reason to take the them unless you know that you're probably the only chance that that animal has for survival and I'm sure that you took much better care than anyone else could. Dont know why I'm saying this because you have been keeping hermit crabs for longer than I've been alive but basically I'm trying to agree that jumbos belong in the wild unless they've been raised from their baby stages. Also do you think indos would prefer jade turbos due to their huge claw size.


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

All the hermit crabs that are available for purchase are wild caught...

Sent from my LGMS550 using Tapatalk

Yes but wouldn't it be easier on a crab to adjust to life in captivity when it is young and it can grow up and get used to captive life whereas a jumbo is a pretty old large crab that is used to having miles to walk around in comparison to the incredibly small hermit crabs which would be smaller in comparison to the habitat provided (not trying to argue and I am incredibly sorry if it seems like I am)


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I just didn't know if you were aware.

Unfortunately the people collecting them don't care about this.

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[123AE]

All the hermit crabs that are available for purchase are wild caught...

Sent from my LGMS550 using Tapatalk

Yes but wouldn't it be easier on a crab to adjust to life in captivity when it is young and it can grow up and get used to captive life whereas a jumbo is a pretty old large crab that is used to having miles to walk around in comparison to the incredibly small hermit crabs which would be smaller in comparison to the habitat provided (not trying to argue and I am incredibly sorry if it seems like I am)


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I just didn't know if you were aware.

Unfortunately the people collecting them don't care about this.

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Yes it's an incredibly sad situation where the lack of work leaves locals with few options and the only thing we can do is try and give the ones in our care the closest life to natural that we can


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[wodesorel]

The ones I've ended up with were pity purchases, which I debated hard over before doing. I figured I could at least give them a chance at survival and took them home. There are jumbos, which I've had several of with varying degrees of success (a few years and then they die during a molt) and then there are JUMBOS which make your skin crawl a little they are so freaking big, and those have all died pretty much immediately. My last try was maybe five years years ago when a friend of mine who owns a pet store saw some big honkers at a reptile expo and brought them home to me because she felt bad for them. After that I just gave up, it's too heartbreaking and buying them doesn't help stop it from happening.

Of course, there is no way of knowing how much of it is that something went really wrong, and how much of it is that they're just really really old. Crustaceans do not age in the way everything else does, since they can regenerate cells. Their "aging" is the exponential amount of energy required with each subsequent molt. At some point they run out of the ability to produce enough energy to make it through a molt, and that's when they die a natural death. Capturing them and putting them through heck and forcing them to adapt to captivity takes so much energy out of them that I really believe they are never fully able to catch up and replenish what they lost, which is why so big ones many end up dying.

[Hermias_mom]

:'( Poor jumbos. I wish folks would just leave all the crabs in the wild. I really love mine, but if there were some way to return them to their native habitat without the risk to the native population (from illnessnes and such my crabs contracted during captivity), I would totally do it. When I first got my crabs, I had no idea there were so many serious moral dilemmas inherent in crabbing.

So here's a question - I've ended up with three small/medium crabs, they're in captivity now, and I want to take good care of them for the rest of their lives. Assuming I don't have a Carol Ormes experience, and assuming optimal tank conditions, nutrition, etc, how long do most of them live in captivity? I'd like to estimate how many years of my life I can expect to devote to these little guys.

[wodesorel]

Sadly there doesn't seem to be a rhyme or reason to why some make it longer than others. Baring a catastrophe of some sort, I would say that for established (has molted in captivity) PPs that a decade is well within norms if you're starting out with smaller crabs. Two decades would not be unheard of. However, it's not like we can take these guys in for checkups to know if everything is going well or find out if they have unavoidable health problems, so having some pass before that is not a sign of anything being wrong with their care.

I just lost my very first hermit crab this month (first crab, not my first loss), and I'd had him for nearly 8 years. He became a jumbo on his very first molt with me, so while I'm not sure if it was completely natural, it is within the realm of possible. I have several other crabs that are still with me from around that same time period that were much much smaller when I brought them home. I have another in my care that has been in captivity for probably around 13 or 15 years now (I'm his third owner) and a few other adoptees that are probably very close to that that came to me as very large crabs several years ago.

When I was doing adoptions we saw many crabs in their late teens that needed to find new homes, and these were not crabs that were kept in ideal conditions - though it would be a single crab or a pair of crabs that would live to a ripe old age, never in large groups, probably due to the inherent dangers of cannibalism. Most of the long-term crabbers over the years left the HCA after they either found themselves needing or wanting to rehome their crabs, or they had some horrible catastrophe happen where they lost all or nearly all of their hermits at once. There were also quite a few who had exotics, which only live a few years in captivity, and once those passed they were so disheartened that they then rehomed their surviving PPs.

[Hermias_mom]

Sadly there doesn't seem to be a rhyme or reason to why some make it longer than others. Baring a catastrophe of some sort, I would say that for established (has molted in captivity) PPs that a decade is well within norms if you're starting out with smaller crabs. Two decades would not be unheard of. However, it's not like we can take these guys in for checkups to know if everything is going well or find out if they have unavoidable health problems, so having some pass before that is not a sign of anything being wrong with their care.

I just lost my very first hermit crab this month (first crab, not my first loss), and I'd had him for nearly 8 years. He became a jumbo on his very first molt with me, so while I'm not sure if it was completely natural, it is within the realm of possible. I have several other crabs that are still with me from around that same time period that were much much smaller when I brought them home. I have another in my care that has been in captivity for probably around 13 or 15 years now (I'm his third owner) and a few other adoptees that are probably very close to that that came to me as very large crabs several years ago.

When I was doing adoptions we saw many crabs in their late teens that needed to find new homes, and these were not crabs that were kept in ideal conditions - though it would be a single crab or a pair of crabs that would live to a ripe old age, never in large groups, probably due to the inherent dangers of cannibalism. Most of the long-term crabbers over the years left the HCA after they either found themselves needing or wanting to rehome their crabs, or they had some horrible catastrophe happen where they lost all or nearly all of their hermits at once. There were also quite a few who had exotics, which only live a few years in captivity, and once those passed they were so disheartened that they then rehomed their surviving PPs.

Sorry to hear you lost your first crab. That's hard. At least he had a really great life with you. I think it really matters, how we care for the animals we have responsibility for. I expect that most of the pets I'll have in my life will die before me, but that doesn't make it any easier.

And thank you so much for the information! This will help me plan for the future. 20+ years is a lot longer than 10+ years, and my family dynamic will have completely changed by then.

[LadyJinglyJones]

Thanks so much for the perspective, wodesorel. Its invaluable to have this kind of knowledge passed on!

[annedow9]

This is my biggest guy, Hermie (named by the 5 year old who wanted me to take him as he realized he was scared of him)
His shell opening is 2 1/4". I honestly always thought that PPs maxed out at 2 1/4" or 2 1/2". I'm asking as someone recently told me they have a crab with a 3" opening or bigger and I am very skeptical lol



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Wow!! Now that's a crab!! There beautiful.


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