Walking the crab

[DragonsFly]

Right; I make the MSW with distilled water and Instant Ocean; it is just most convenient for me to buy a gallon of distilled water and make the MSW one gallon at a time. I also use filtered spring water for the fresh water; again, just for convenience reasons.

[curlysister]

Correction - I was relieved to realize that actually, that's not true! I used distilled H2O ("purified drinking water") to make my salt water.

Come to think of it - since the only reason to use tap is the trace minerals, electrolytes etc., and considering that Instant Ocean has those in spades, it seems like distilled + Instant Ocean is the way to go for salt water.

Ground water has different minerals than ocean water. So by using dechlorinated tap water (ie- ground water), you ensure that they get the minerals from the ground. Then by adding the marine salt, they get the minerals from the ocean. Both are recommended for long term health.

[crabocado]

Just got back from 8 days out of town, and it looks like Busy did go down for a molt; she has vanished along with the T. sarmaticus shell she had been wearing at last observation. There is a puff of disturbed substrate in the "deep" (high substrate level) end of the tank, so it looks like she picked a good spot. I revisited the care sheet on shell preferences and noted that T. sarmaticus is supposed to be an unpopular shell, so it is interesting that she stuck with it. Hopefully, the tank upgrade to 20g will pay off and she is enjoying the fact that she has roomier conditions than before. In the old 10g tank, what with the plastic "tree branch" for climbing that sat on the aquarium bottom, and the flat stones I had placed to support the water dishes at a high level (to try and keep substrate from tumbling down and filling them up during occasional travel), there was really not much room at all to dig around underground.

[crabocado]

Hello everyone,
I am thrilled to report that Busy reappeared above ground on Monday the 13th! She is looking big, and, beautiful! Today, she tried on a different shell (one of the new "pearled" turbos I had bought), but went back to the T. sarmaticus. She was a bit skittish for the first couple days, not having seen me in about 2 months, so I waited a while before taking her out of the cage. I eased her into the dry air as I typically do by letting her walk around in the bathroom while I took a shower. When I went to grab her I realized she could really cover ground quickly now, and there is quite a clattering when she does. So I thought all right, how about a short jaunt around the TV room. She traversed a familiar path and soon headed for her favorite corner where the modem & router sit behind the TV. I figured half an hour was enough and took her back to the cage. This is just speculation, but I imagined after a molt her gills might take some acclimating to get accustomed to the dry air. Although I also suppose that the larger a crab gets, perhaps the more able it is to maintain comfortable conditions inside its shell, when out "on the town".

As discussed earlier, I set her up in a new 20 gal tank in July, with some urgency, as she had been starting to dig in her 10 gal and I had to go out of town visiting parents. I always used to get nervous about the water supply because she used to find ways to drastically reduce the water in her dish. Tossing coco fiber into it, she would leave I suppose a "wick" kind of connection that pulled water out of the dish. So a big priority in the new setup was to buy a pretty huge water dish (the biggest one in the aquarium store, maybe a foot across?), and with that stacked on a thick piece of slate, it's just about impossible to tip over or fill with substrate. But with that big deep dish, a couple inches deep, I got nervous she would somehow drown it in, and went to some trouble to add stepping stones just in case. The other priority was adding much deeper substrate. This turned out well, although it was lonesome waiting for her to emerge; I peered in all sides of the cage but never saw a hint of her burrow through the glass.
Interesting note, this was the first time that she has reused a molting burrow (or at least, the first time there was enough space to do this in an obvious way)... she has crawled back in a couple times. It is a nice sort of "basement" design in the middle of the tank, between two dishes and her plastic log, undercutting the salt water dish.

[crabocado]

ps - DragonsFly, that was a great tip about the bloodworms! I bought a shaker of them right before her molt. It was in her first meal the other day and I think it is a new favorite, as you mentioned. The other favorite is the "strawberry treat" powdered crab food. As far as pesticides go, I realized that I have an organic garden in the yard (tomatoes & cucumbers), so during summer at least she'll have that. I can't say she was crazy about the veggies though, but might have poked at them a bit.

[DragonsFly]

In describing your new crabitat for her, it sound like you only have one water dish? Does she not have both fresh and marine salt water?

[crabocado]

Hi, she does have both salt and fresh water. The fresh water is in the huge dish, and salt water is in the smaller dish that currently provides a partial roof for her burrow. Posting images is definitely not trivial on this site! Here, I'll try it with an ASCII diagram...

Code: Select all

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Salt.................................................Cholla.log.(vertical)...
water............Plastic.....Plastic.........................................
dish.............log-........"dead................"Huge".(~10.inches.across).
.......Burrow....shaped.......tree"...............fresh.water.dish...........
Food.............shelter......for.................fills.up.a.good.portion....
dish..........................climbing............of.this.third.of.the.tank..
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Also, just today, I found my old ZooMed undertank heater. Currently stuck on to the left side of the thank. But she prefers the desk lamp which sits near the right side.

[crabocado]

Busy still comes out (with my help) for a couple hours every night around dinner time, and I have a few new exploits to share. As I mentioned I'm always vigilant to keep her from getting into certain areas. But eventually she got behind the big couch, a dusty "no-no land" where we haven't cleaned in decades if ever. So that was a bit alarming, although I could see her back there, with a flashlight (well, I was holding the flashlight, she wasn't, but I suppose that's obvious). To my great relief, she just kept on going and going, finally emerging at the far end where we have some books on the floor that normally keep her out from that end, and I was able to grab her. That couch is old and may have some holes so my big fear is she'll find a way into the interior. In a similar incident, she got behind a bookcase, and again it's very dusty back there with a pile of houseplant leaves (again, in need of a cleaning). That book case has a space in the front that might be just big enough for her to get in; otherwise, she could have got there by barging through a bean-bag chair that I wedge against the book case. In any case once again I was able to retrieve her. That room with the book case is a popular destination, it doesn't have much furniture so when she goes there, I don't usually need to check more than every 5-10 minutes. I have a thick book wedged behind each end of the piano so she has very few options to get into trouble. She tends to gravitate to the far end where we have some houseplants, probably not edible, and there are dried leaves on the floor. She really seems fond of those, but after a couple minutes I pull her away. I don't stress about it too much because I figure a little "taste" is probably okay. Crabs in the wild surely have to make decisions about what to eat also.

An interesting thing happened a few weeks ago. I had been eating potato chips (with some fancy flavor, maybe BBQ or something) before I reached in to bring her out. Her antennae were wiggling a lot, and she walked toward my hand, and spent some time poking and tasting my hand. I don't recall her actively approaching my hand before. This kind of "eager" response to food is also something I noted occasionally in recent months just from putting items in the food dish that she really loves - sometimes she seems to instantly smell it and heads right over to the food dish. Current favorites are blood worms, and strawberry treat (pet store hermit crab product - see earlier for details). This fall, something new is slices of apple. Generally from a non-commercial source (some tree in the neighborhood or a friend's yard). We also bought some apples at a "you-pick-it" place, which seemed very wholesome, although I realize now I should have asked them if they spray. Anyway, I've been eating a lot of apples in recent weeks and always save a slice for Busy. Sometimes she really likes it, in one case ate the entire slice! It was quite incredible, and took days. In most cases, she just pokes a few wholes. In one case, I put a slice of red apple and a slice of yellow/green apple, and she ignored the red but really liked the yellow one.

We also decided to keep our basil plants alive all winter, so, I bring them in (in a plastic planter) every night before it freezes, and it sits by a kitchen window, on the floor. Busy recently climbed into it and appeared to be munching! A couple nights later I placed a whole basil leaf (~2.5 inches) in her food dish and she ate about half of it.

She still really likes the dog food - again I only give her a couple minutes until I have a chance to yank her away and I always find a way to get the food out of her claw, either I just pull it out, or I wait until she's distracted and then pick her up suddenly which often gives me a chance to grab it.

For months since the last molt (see above) she has been wearing a drab old shell we've had for years. Occasionally she gets in a shell-swapping mood. In the past week or two, or so she's been using the T. sarmaticus shell and also, and for one day a big green turbo, but especially a pearled turbo for several days, which are all new shells from this year's purchase; but now she's back to the old shell again.

[DragonsFly]

Thanks for sharing the continuing adventures of Busy!

[crabocado]

Today I was a little nervous about having Busy wander randomly because we had had a power outage for a brief period. (I kept a flashlight in my pocket so I could retrieve her quickly but still, it would be asking for trouble to have her wandering far and wide in case the power went out again.). So I just put her in the basil planter (sitting in the kitchen) because it has steep sides and is difficult to climb in or out. She hung out there quite a while, nibbling on something. This gave me an idea, in general for folks who are kind of ambivalent about letting their crabs out. You can create a hospitable and safe place, where they can wander and check out new things, but confined by some kind of wall. This would give them new and safe experiences, like in some of the zoos nowadays that alternate letting animals into different enclosures for enrichment. It makes me want to set up a little greenhouse/terrarium for plants (I'm sure there's a special name for this), with mosses, maybe some carnivorous plants or whatever. The crab can go in occasionally to wreak havoc. Obviously you can put everything in one big crab enclosure, and I know a lot of people do that, but some of us balk at committing a room to a gargantuan tank. I like to approach things in a piecemeal fashion. With small plant enclosures, she could spend time in them, they can also be portable and used to decorate a front room in a way that the spouse will tolerate.

Just a thought. Happy new year!

[Jlmills525]

neat! like taking her out to the restaurant!

[DragonsFly]

neat! like taking her out to the restaurant!

[Hermiecrab]

Awesome idea!

[hermitsinnc]

This is quite interesting! Is she able to walk on all types of flooring (hardwood, carpet, tile, laminate)?

[crabocado]

This is quite interesting! Is she able to walk on all types of flooring (hardwood, carpet, tile, laminate)?

Hi, yes, she walks mostly on carpet, and hardwood floor, but also has done faux-wood decking, and table-tops. I'm sure other surfaces would work too. She does have trouble scrambling over the metal base of a lamp, which can create quite a racket as she sometimes keeps slipping for several minutes but never gives up. A fabric couch, and wicker magazine basket make great climbing structures.