Woohooo! Two females with eggs! Update P.6! BABIES! (PPs)

[Happy Crabber]

He did!!!!!!!!!! And they are unbelievably cute!!!

[naalide]

He did!!!!!!!!!!

She did.

@Crabbielover1031: The links are no html-side, they are pdf. Maybe your browser needs some extras to open them?

[CrabbyIrene]

Curlz- Truly amazing!!

Wolf- have you heard from your hubby how the babies are doing? I need an update, I'm going through withdrawal!

[wodesorel]

Curlz, I couldn't view the links. But did you actually raise the larvae into little crabby babies yet?

You'll need Adobe Reader (free) http://get.adobe.com/reader/
Or a browser that does it automatically, like Chrome.

[wolfnipplechips]

Curlz, thanks so much for being here! I think we can all learn a lot from you. It's very exciting that your crabs have eggs pretty much all the time. The people around here have only observed summer matings. I'm sure I will have a lot of questions for you, but I have to read over your document again to make sure they aren't already answered there. I'm on vacation right now, so it's hard to find time to sit down and relax. I just hope you stick around here for a while.

Update on my babies:
My husband keeps doing water changes, but he says there are only a few live ones, and he doesn't know which stage they are in. He says most are dead on the crushed oyster shells. I told him he may not be seeing the glaucothoes on the bottom, but I dunno. He seems to think it's pretty much over. He said he is still going to do water changes until he sees no more live ones. I think with Curlz's information, I will modify my set up for next year a bit. I'm very excited to know for sure that it CAN be done outside of a lab. That's such great news.

[wolfnipplechips]

(Just saw your edit, Curlz)

Of course, you may may use any of my photos and videos.

[Rocky]

Curlz, your babies are amazing! It gives crabbers hope that we may have a captive breeding program, and soon! And maybe one day everyone will own captive bred crabs and wild ones will be left alone. (although I forsee issues with crabby "mills" )
But the fact remains: it can be done! you managed, wolf got thisclose (and there's still hope for the last few), and wodesorel has batches of eggs just waiting to be laid. This is seriously the dawn of a completely new era for crabs and crab keepers everywhere! You guys are making history as we speak, and it's an honour to be here watching it

(And as a side note, I have a sweet spot for violas, would it be possible to post any more pictures of the babies on here? Pretty pretty pretty pretty pleeeease? )

[Curlz]

hi @ all

I did not expect this great response! Thank you

Yes it can be done. And I would like to read from naalide, wolfnipplechips and wodesorel

This is wolf's thread and I interrupted it. Let's keep our fingers crossed for the last ones.
I will open a new thread with a short story about my terrariums. I was asked for it in the chat. And I will show some babie hermit pictures.
Even it is not 100% proved if this little thingies really violas. Can be ruggies, clypies, blueberry or ecuadorian hermits instead...

back to topic:
@wolf: on the 3 of August the Glaucothoe seems to be very near to start searching for shells (mine start to examine shells on day 25).
The dead one laying at the money on one of your pictures is showing a nearly fully devoloped Glaucothoe. Mine looked not as fully devolepd as this one as they took shells. They took shells longer as some hours at day 32.
At this point we put them into a second tank with a water pool and sand. A treebrunch for climbing out the water.

At the moment the first larvae turns into Glaucothoe we start to feed mysis and krill (frosted mysis and frosted krill, that we have defrosted before feeding). I won't believe it, but the eat themselfs. The Glaucothoe eat the larvae which are about to molt to Glaucothoe. Real cannibals
But as they got the mysis and krill the stop cannibalism.


There you can find the second tank (sorry it is in german, but I think the picture are explainig it enough (hopefully)): https://docs.google.com/open?id=0Bxr0FH ... c0RocThnQQ

[Curlz]

Yes and there are a lot of things the same as in my experiment!
Without a helpful manual she did a great job

I start with round about 300 larvae (too much! I've planned to take 50) .... counting wasn't mine

In the diagram on the last side of my sheet you can see the attrition rate. Approximately.
Rightside = number
Below = days

Blue = larvae
red = megalopa
green = megalopa move to land

I have tried to write it down like a diary. So that I can check what has happen at which day. But this is the short version. The each day version was too big to upload

[Crabbielover1031]

That's absolutely amazing Curlz! I'm on Chrome now and saw the pictures, they are sooooo amazingly cute! That's great you got Violas to breed!

What kind of crabs do you have access to over in Germany? Which kind is most commonly sold? Over here it's purple pinchers.

[Curlz]

good morning,

with a bit of luck you can get nearly all kinds of hermits. Except scaevola (arabian), variabilis (australian), cavipes (concave ?), spinosus (spinner?). Sometimes you can find one of thess real rare ones between the other sorts. But extremely rare chance,

[Skymall007]

I can't imagine Herbit eating his siblings. He is just so passive and peaceful. He is so passive, that when all the hermits were fighting over a log spot (there is plenty of room), Herbit went in his shell and Friendlyfeat, of all crabs, actually picked him up and scooted him out of the log and left him there. That's how passive Herbit is, even the unfriendly ones protect him. Maybe as a baby he was a completely different hermit lolz.

[Crabbielover1031]

annopia has a C. Scaveola (I don't think I spelled that right...) and it's gorgeous! It has molted with her a few times too!

I find it odd that you can't get C.Variabilis, since we can get strawberries (C. Perlatus) over here in the U.S., and they come Australia and Japan, and Micronesia.

Am I confusing you when I say Aussie, Blueberry, Strawberry?

[Crabbielover1031]

And I forgot to ask you, Curlz, could I please have permission to share your pictures on my Facebook page for my hermit crab rescue? I own Caring Claws Hermit Crab Rescue, and I've been updating everyone with baby news! So could I use some of your pictures? I would give you credit, of course! Would you like me to use your name, or just "Curlz of HCA"?

And another question: If you walk into a store, and they have hermies, they have all different kinds? We only have either C. Clypeatus, C. Compressus (hard to find depending where you live), and C. Perlatus (pretty hard to find, you usually have to order them).

[wodesorel]

I find it odd that you can't get C.Variabilis, since we can get strawberries (C. Perlatus) over here in the U.S., and they come Australia and Japan, and Micronesia.

Australia doesn't allow the export of variabilis (Aussie Crab or Crazy Crab), which is why no one outside of that country can get them. One person had a trial permit to export them to one person in the US to see if it was something that Australia was comfortable with allowing, but it was only good for a few shipments and it hasn't been renewed.