New to the forums! Equadorian question

[pixellator]

Hi all, I've been reading on the forum for about three or four weeks now and just decided to join.

In March of 2015 my ex bought my 9 year old son a hermit crab from a mall kiosk. I'm a caring mom and bought a 10 gallon tank for it, with some supplies. I went from knowing absolutely nothing about them to being a moderately educated caretaker. Thanks to this board, that is.

I believe I have an Equadorian hermit crab because it has comma shaped eyes and tan claws that get a bit darker at the tips. I've read that this species likes to hang out with others of its same species. But I can't find any equadorians anywhere. Not sure how to get some buddies for my little guy. He's molted once, maybe twice. The mall kiosks have all disappeared, and my local petsmart and petco only carry the Carribean hermies with the purple claws.

Yes, I've got enough substrate, I've got salt water and fresh water, I give him pellets plus fresh veggies. I've got the guage and dechlorinated water in a spray bottle to keep humidity to 80%. And I love watching this little hermie. He spends time buried at the bottom of the coconut fiber and sometimes he clears a spot at the glass so he can be buried and see out.

I see there is lots of controversy about where to buy hermies. Once I saw that on the forums, I posted on my local nextdoor neighborhood app and volunteered to take over anyone's crabs that they don't want. I got no response to that. I looked on my local craigslist and found only one set of hermies for sale but they were Caribbeans. Is it ok to ask a store owner of a specialty reptile shop to special order Equadorians? Is it ok to put two species together?

Thanks in advance!

[Crabber85]

I have had a mixed tank for years with no problems E's or Ecuadorians and Purple Pinchers and they get along just fine.

It is still a good idea to try to find a least one species companion for your little E and if I could see a pic of it I could give you a positive I.D on it as they are sometimes mistaken for Ruggies/ Coenobita Rugosis being that when they are juveniles they tend to display the same colors as one another and have similar eyes.

The odds that you have a Ruggie are pretty low as the species is not normally available in the US but some pet stores have been known to get them in on the odd occasion.

You can ask a Pet Store to special order you a couple in though I'm not sure if they will do it or what the cost is going to be versus ordering them yourself off the internet.

[pixellator]

...Now testing photo shared to google plus


Aha! I found the instruction posting for how to embed images. viewtopic.php?f=8&t=87783&p=947749#p947752 These are great instructions for lots of social media sites.

[Crabber85]

Yes that's an E, the way you can tell for sure is that the Ruggie will have a more pronounced set of markings on its head, the E has similar markings but they are not quite so pronounced which to me look a little like chunky quotation marks on both species.

That is definitely a beautiful little E you have there.

[pixellator]

This little E is very beautiful, thank you. I want him to have other little E friends. I'm learning more things about the message boards the more time I spend on here. So I've used the search bar at the top right to pull all posts with Ecuadorian and I learned that it's not spelled with an e-q-u. True to the advice on the boards, I have had this E for six months and he hasn't changed shells yet. I'll keep on asking local stores if they can find me another E.

[Crabber85]

Yeah I'm an admin with the LHC sub forum we just merged with HCA and so I've been brought on as an HCA admin and I can already tell I have a lot of learning because this forum is so much different than what we'd had in the past.lol

It took me forever to get the correct spelling for Ecuadorian down because I'd seen it spelled both ways and figured there was no proper spelling for the word but I eventually learned.

Keep it up and you'll be an expert in all things crabby in no time.

[wodesorel]

(Hint: Think Ecuador the country. This species hails from there and all along the Pacific Central American coastline from Mexico down into Peru in South America.)

The only thing I would recommend is to be careful of how much space the hermits have. I had exceptionally bad luck with my Es, to the point where I gave up after several years and sent my last three to live with another member. (Sach.) It really comes down to their individual personalities, but making sure they have an overload of space so they can get away from each other also prevents issues!

[Crabber85]

I agree with wodesorel E's do need a lot of space because they are so active they tend to get bored very quickly in cramped or smaller enclosures that don't offer enough space for them to move freely in.

I've had my E's for quite some time now bought them when they were the size of a dime and now they are all up to twice the size of a golf ball so I'd say I'm doing pretty good and yes I've heard of others who try as they might just can't seem to keep E's but do exceptionally well with the domestic PP.

As much as I hate to say it the E is not a species for everybody for various reasons not many owners I have known have been successful with them.

[pixellator]

Wodesorel and Crabber85, that's good advice, thank you. I've seen on the forums that I'll be needing to upgrade my tank probably by next year. I don't think I'd put more than three E's in my current set up. I'm probably one of those rare peeps who can handle caring for an E. But it makes me mad that the mall kiosks were selling these guys so cheap and with very little info on how to care for them. I'm glad I can't find any more mall kiosks for hermies, but now I've got a lonely E. I didn't know anything in the beginning; my kiddo just came home with the E one day. By the time I learned that he needed buddies it was six months later.

Today I went to check my little E and found he had gotten trapped under the saran wrap that's around the lid. He was between the underside of the lid and the saran wrap. Yes, they can certainly climb up the glue in the corners of the glass tank. And this morning, he was smack in the middle of the plastic plant in the corner.

Now for safety and humidity, what do I do? I'm in arid Colorado and I need the saran on the lid to keep that moisture in.

[Crabber85]

@pixellator, I've only got my Glads Press and Seal wrap on the topside of the lid so its not accessible to my hermitcrabs and its securely taped down along the perimeter of the lid frame.

I've had my E's get into some sticky situations as they are clever little climbers and will pretty much always find a way to get where they want to go.

[KellyCrabbieLove]

My Es are awesome. I have never had a problem with them except the largest is king of the tank and knocks the others around. He is kind of a jerk. Lol no fights, no eating of other crabs and no pinching. They are dreams.

Sent from my SM-G900V using Tapatalk

[Crabber85]

@KellyCrabbieLove, mine are pretty well behaved but my largest one seems to think he has rule over the roost and will quickly assert his dominance even over the PP's.

I've not seen my big E actively bullying his tank-mates but I have heard that when E's hit golf ball size that they get brutish because they tend to have tempers where the PP are pretty laid back most of the time.

It was either Nicole or Crabby Abby who called them knuckle draggers and that is about what my big boy looks like.lol

Because PP's are hardier and therefor more forgiving a lot of people who do well with them assume that E's will be similar in difficulty of care but when they actually get them the first thing that typically happens is a total loss of the E population in the tank because the minimum conditions for being successful with them just weren't being met.

I believe it was either Flight Response or Aviate posted a few years ago about loosing their second batch of E's due to some mysterious issue with their tank setup and so they decided not to try with E's again because the species was proving A : To fragile or B: Signaling something wrong with the tank conditions.

I learned early on with my E's that there is a bit of a learning curve with them because they do require adjustments from the basic PP care for the owner to be successful with them and out of six I still have three which proved to be the hardier of the group the others seemed to have major difficulties molting in ISO likely due to PPS which is unfortunately all to common with any species of hermitcrab coming from the pet store.

[KellyCrabbieLove]

A few of my favorite pictures are my Es being insane. I love them so.

Sent from my SM-G900V using Tapatalk

[wodesorel]

I adored my Es and they are the cutest and most active species, but over the span of a year I went from 12 to 3 because they kept eating each other. The previous batch of Es I had did the same thing as best I could tell, and it was smaller crabs going after larger ones. I did everything I was 'supposed' to, gave them an insanely varied diet and a big tank. Heck, I got zoea from them, so I was doing something right! But I'm pretty sure it was a single crab or a pair that was causing the trouble. They changed color so many times that it was hard to keep track through molts which crabs were which to know for sure. It broke my heart and I couldn't risk the lives of anymore and their numbers had dwindled so much that I was concerned they would start turning on each other. (I have a massive PP colony that has no troubles, so the E thing was a real head scratcher.)

[Crabber85]

@wodesorel, I've learned over the years that E's tend to be finicky some will have better temperaments than others and I've seen nickle sized E's dominating golf ball sized PP's because the E just seemed to have a problem with being aggressive and the species as a whole seems to struggle in captivity easily falling victim to fungal infections and the fungus basically just covers their bodies coating the gills to the point that the crab suffocates not to mention the fact that they molt and tend to surface way too weak to keep their shells on so they dump them midway back up and emerge on the surface naked making them easy victims.

E's are in my opinion a hit or miss if you'll be successful with them regardless of your overall experience level as even some of the most hardened crabbing veterans have had issues or difficulties with keeping a strong healthy E population but do exceptionally well with the seriously fragile Straws.