My first crab was actually a foster crab. My Aunt Karen had asked me to pick up a jumbo crab for her from the mall and bring it with me the next time I visited. So he was suppose to live with me only a few short weeks. Well, two weeks into my fostership I started doing research and realized that hermit crabs were fascinating. Caries (the name my aunt eventually gave that hermit crab) became less and less active, I decided that he was depressed and went out and purchased 3 small PP (purple pincher or C. Clypeatus) hermit crabs to keep him company.

He perked up immediately! They were a lot of fun and eventually Caries made it to live with my Aunt and her other two Jumbos and I went back home to a ten gallon with the three hermit crabs (Peace, Blue, and 8-Ball). Well the three of them disappeared and I sat and wondered. For six straight weeks. Finally one day, I walked by the crabitat and all three were on the surface looking freshly molted. It was a happy day!

However, a crab can dig and dig and dig and come up weeks later, never having molted, she's just being active. While technically that's a good thing, it can be frustrating. I'm going to give you an illustrated guide on how to tell if your hermit crab is freshly molted.

A hermit crab is hairy. Did you know that? When their exoskeleton is fresh they have lots of hairs and even tiny eyelashes.

My favorite spot is that tuft of hair just inside their pinchers. Over time the hair wears off. Here is a picture of the same crab that is shown above but this was taken last spring, before he molted.

Notice how in the post-molt picture all the hair has been worn off and how the coloring at the ends of the leg is faded. Also you can see that the very tip of his walking leg has been worn smooth and the black nail tip is missing from the end of his leg. That is an excellent indicator of the molting status of any crab. A freshly molted crab will have a black and shiny "tip" on the end of all of its legs as well as the big pincher and little pincher. This, like the hair, gets worn away during the normal course of crab activity.

So that is one less mystery to be solved. If your crab that has just come up from a 12 day dig isn't sporting leg hair and a black shiny nail tips, odds are he was just digging for fun. Now smaller crabs don't get quiet as hairy as jumbo crabs do, but the nail tips are the same for both. So next time don't wonder, give your hermit crab a once over and know for sure what he has been doing down there!

I answer a lot of question from new crabbers, both here, on Crab Street Journal and on allexperts.com. One of the things that frustrates me the most about new crab owners is the poor information that they get sent home with. I know that I've talked at length about gravel, and heat/humidity. But there is one element of the "new crab kit" that just wont die. The sponge. I don't know exactly why crabbers hang onto these for as long as they do, but I wanted to take a few minutes to debunk the "all powerful" sponge.

Some people add sponges in an effort to help regulate their humidity. While this does work to a degree, it has a number of drawbacks which do not make a sponge worth the trouble. Humidity can be effectively maintained using a DIY humidifier or some piles of natural moss. Sponges must be removed and sterilized in the microwave ever 24-36 hours to prevent a harmful bacterial buildup. This isn't a problem for the other humidity solutions.

The other reason that people add sponges to their hermit crab tanks is because they have been told that hermit crabs can only drink from sponges (NOT TRUE!) and that they can drown in too much water, which is also false. Hermit crabs are equipped to deal with pools of water similar to the water they would encounter in their natural environment. They do not need a sponge to act as a safety mechanism. Now if you have a very deep pool and some very small crabs, you might provide something for them to climb out on, but even in that instance, a sponge is not your best choice.

Finally, filling your water dish with a sponge makes it impossible for your crabs to get into the water and get water into their shells. This is important for their overall health as they keep their shell water regulated to lubricate their abdomen and keep their gills moist.

So next time someone tells you that you must have a sponge in your tank, tell them no thanks, you've found a way to do everything a sponge could do, without any of the hassle!

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"Is it safe to keep my big hermit crab and my little hermit crab together?" I get this question a lot. In fact I've even been told by pet store associates that you should NOT keep different sizes of crabs together. Well today, I'd like to set the record straight. It is perfectly fine to put all types of hermit crabs together. The only thing that you must do to keep them happy is provide hiding and climbing areas that are appropriate for all the sizes you have as well as a much larger variety of shells.

It is true that I have had a few instances of aggression in my crabitat but every single instance (three) the aggression occurred between crabs that were roughly the same size.

You can also keep different species together without problems as long as you offer a bit wider variety of diet and take into account that different species like different types of shells. The only exception to this is Straws (C. Perlatus) and they too can be incorporated into your tank but it does take a bit more accomodating that the other species. I'm going to address these species-specific issues in a future post.

So if you've got some big guys and want some little guys or you just think that you might be ready for that large or jumbo, know that as long as your tank is big enough, you're in good shape. Adopt away!

I received an overwelmingly positive response to my other article about hermit crabs in painted shells. Most people were saddened and shocked by what they read and a few were even called to action to speak out about painted shells to other people. However, not all the feedback I got was positive. I had a few people leave comments which claimed that I had no proof of the methods that are used to get hermit crabs into the painted shells. I fully admit that it is a hard pill to swallow. Noone wants to believe that their hermit crabs might be victims of cruelty. However, my previous article is absolutely true. Proof is a powerful thing. I'm embedding this video so that anyone who wishes to can see first hand the process that I wrote about in my other article.

So you've decided to add a crab to your clan. Or maybe you just found yourself standing in front of the hermit crab tank at your local pet store, contemplating their current crew. Is is possible to maximize your success based on what crab you pick and why? Absolutely. In this article I'm going to walk you through picking out a crab from a pet store, some things to look for to help you make the best choice, and what types of situations to avoid if possible.

There are several steps to evaluating a crab tank at a petstore before you ever start looking for that special crab.

1. Setup. What type of substrate are they using? Are there water bowls? Is there a temp/humidity gauge? What is the reading at? This will be important later as you help your new crab adjust to their permanent home. As you can see in the picture, this pet store is using sand in the bottom (which is great!), there are two water dishes which is rare, but unfortunately neither have standing water in it, only damp sponges. There's also no way to tell if one dish is salt water.

2. Now do a second sweep. Look for dropped limbs and dead crabs. Take a wiff of the crab tank to see if you can detect a fishy odor. A mild smell is not that unusual but if it's knocking you over it means that either there is a lot of crab death happening or they are not cleaning out dead crabs very often, neither are good signs. Likewise, a few dropped limbs isn't totally out of the ordinary but if there are more than one or two, these crabs are in bad shape.

3. Empty shells. Take a look at the crabs in the tank and take a look at the empty shells that are in there with them. Are they similar in size and decoration (because they will most likely be painted). If they are then chances are very good that these shells recently had owners who are now deceased. The more random empty shells the better off you will be going somewhere else.

4. Look at the edge of the substrate at the bottom of the tank (you should be able to see it if they are in a glass tank). If it is a different color than the rest of the tank, streaked with mineral deposits or worse, moldy, move on. It means that this store doesn't often do a thorough clean of their tanks, let alone, a complete tank clean between shipments.

Once you've gotten all this information from the tank itself you can start to evaluate which crab you might want to take home. The key to this type of search is activity. When possible, ask the salesperson if you can look at the crabs yourself. Most store workers will let you, especially if you ask politely. Reach in and lift up all the hidey items. Half round logs, tiki huts, cocohuts, whatever is in there. Shift the hiding crabs out into the open gently. Replace the hidey and allow the crabs to move back toward it if they wish.

Look for activity. Who is out and about. Who seems petrified by your presence and who seems merely put out. Select a couple of likely candidates and gently, one by one, take them out and sit them on the palm of your hand. Do they come out after a few seconds? Do they seem curious? An active crab has a much higher survival rate even if they have dropped a limb, than an extremely passive, withdrawn crab.

Try for a crab that is in a natural shell. I know it's nice to rescue those decorated crabs but if you are looking for a survival rate that is fairly tolerable, natural shelled crabs do much better than painted shell crabs.

If you are more than 10 minutes from the pet store look into bringing along a 2-3 gallon kritter keeper with a decent setup to transport the crab in rather than the cardboard box/plastic cup. I've had bad luck with crabs that had to wait to be placed into a tank compared to the ones that got moved into the crabitat fairly straight away.

In the end, you choose which crab you want and from where, but in the future, you can use all the information available to you to make an informed decision and pick crabs that have the maximum survival chances possible.

Did you know that one of the main staples in a wild hermit crab's diet is feces? I know, pretty gross huh? But it makes sense. Hermit crabs are beach combers and as they travel across the beaches and the inland areas they consume all sorts of things and animal and bird feces make up a large part of that. The practice of consuming feces is called coprophagia.

Since I started crabbing every great once in awhile I hear stories of a crabber introducing some sort of feces in their tank. Turtle, guinea pig, and horse poo are the ones that I've heard of. The crab responses are usually very good.

Recently too, the practice of adding worm casting to the tank has become popular. Worm castings are basically a clean dirt but no less than 100% worm poop for it. Few people think of worm castings as true feces because it is honestly what makes up the dirt in your yard, but it provides much of the same benefits.

After some late night internet combing however, I ran across a product I'd never seen before, Seabird Guano. (Guano is a polite word for bird/bat feces). I passed on the bat guano because I couldn't see crabs venturing into cold, dark caves however, seabird guano is something that they would certainly encounter in their natural environment.

So did they like it? No word yet. As the weather shifts they've got all got underground as they normally do for a few weeks. I'm going to be doing a deep clean and installing some warming cable and I'll be back to update you on how it's received in a few weeks.