We have all seen hermit crabs in painted shells at the pet store or in a kiosk at the mall. Usually they are painted to look like cartoon characters, holiday themes, simple designs, or sports themes. In today's article I want to you a little bit about where painted shells come from, the methods used to get crabs into painted shells, what happens when you get your crab home, and what all of this means for me, for you, and for the crabs.

Painted shells are painted in large numbers for very little money. This poses two kids of problems. First, workers aren't making a living wage, second, the distributors are collecting thousands (yes, thousands) of viable shells from beaches and rendering them useless to crabbers. In a time when wild land and marine hermit crabs are suffering a severe shell shortage, this might be the most damaging practice of the entire painted shell cycle.

Hermit crabs are harvested from the wild. This we know. In the wild they are wearing natural shells. By the time they get to your local pet store they are in painted shells. The question has been posed many times. How do they get from their original shell into the painted one. We know that they are not painting them in the shell because they would ruin the paint crawling all over one another.

We are therefore forced to concede that they are being removed from one shell and placed in another. I don't know if you've ever tried to get a hermit crab to come out of its shell but take my word for it, they aren't going to go willingly. In fact, most hermit crabs will allow themselves to be torn in half before letting go of their shell. That leaves us with only a few options, all of them relying on the crab leaving it's shell of it's own free will.

Many methods have been suggested over the years with not a lot of hard evidence for any of them. Most of them are rumors but I've heard the following three rumors often enough to believe that there are some truth to them. One is to use electricity or heat to get the crab to leave it's shell. One is to force the shell under water until the crab leaves to avoid drowning. The final one is to place the hermit crabs in a small cage that prevents them from getting to food and water that is outside the "bars" of the cage. Once they leave their shell to get to water, they are moved to the painted shell box. A crab will re-shell quickly when naked. If the only choices are painted shells, that's where he will go.

Personally I believe that the first one is the most likely although some part of me secretly hopes that they are drugging the crabs and removing them while they are limp and sleepy. Much less traumatic all around. However, I've never hear that possibility from any source, credible or no.

The shells are painted on the outside and often on the inside as well. They are not always dry when the crabs move into them, you can read about Piccalo's horrible ordeal when her crab came home stuck inside it's shell because of the paint.

Manufactures and distributors will make lots of claims about the benefits of painted shells. Some will say that scientist have proven that crabs prefer painted shells. Not true. There has never been a scientific study that showed crabs prefer brightly colored shells. In fact, many crabbers have observed that a crab will choose a shell that helps to camouflage them the most. All the crabs I have ever had ditched their painted shell within 1 day of arriving in my terrarium and no one ever changes into them.

There are also painted shell vendors that claim that they sell a "no peel" shell. Well Milo, pictured at the beginning of the article is in one of their "no peel" shell. Seashells are not a surface conducive to a permanent paint job. Add to that a crab that is crawling around in sand and high humidity and very few types of paints would withstand that treatment.
What happens to all this garbage paint coming off of these shells? The same thing that happens to anything in the crabitat, it gets eaten. Hermit crabs are constantly picking up and nibbling on things in their environment and the paint chips are no different. I have even seen crabs eating the paint right off of another crabs shell. And if you don't believe that a crab can pick the paint off of a shell, keep in mind that crabs can and will chip away at the opening of the shell they are in until it is the right shape and size.


It has also become trendy to glue plastic baseball and football helmets over shells during sports season. These are often so cumbersome that the hermit crabs can barely maneuver and cannot hide at all because they no longer fit into caves and cocohuts. Similar to this trend is the disasterous Hermit Crab "Bling" kits that encourage kids to glue sparkles, pompoms, and rhinestones to their hermit crabs shell. All will fall off within a few weeks and all of which are harmful to your crab.


In a time when most petstores have undertaken a voluntary ban on selling animals like the painted glassfish it's long past due to stop a practice that is harmful to hermit crabs, depleting much needed natural resources, and encouraging children and their parents to walk into disasterous "impulse buy" situations that lead to poorly treated and often neglected hermit crabs once the family loses interest. As easy going as I am about differing opinions regarding hermit crab care, this is something that should unite us. Hermit crabs are not a toy, they are not a throwaway pet, and they deserve better. We, as caretakers of the planet, are the ones who must step up and get the job done.

I have never had aggression problems in my crabitat. I keep it big and full of things to explore and places to hide. I also keep it far under capacity, with around 25 crabs in the 90 gallon terrarium. One day, I found one of my cutest, sweetest, and shyest crabs, a viola whom I adopted from a friend, locked onto another crab's shell. I pried her off and moved her into the corner and him up to the moss pit.

Within a few seconds she was charging across the tank, snapping her big pincher and chirping. This is even more significant when you find out that I've never been able to coax this crab out of her shell in my presence up until this moment. Over the next few days I seperated them 4 or 5 more times. It made no sense until it dawned on me, she wanted the apple murex that Fancy (the other crab) was in.

Now, I have plenty of other shells, apple murex's among them but she had fixated on this one. It was at this time, after much coaxing and sweet talking, that I got fancy to emerge from his shell. To my horror, I saw that she had clipped the tips off of each of his legs and taken a nip out of his BP. That was it! I packed him off to stay with a friend in her crabitat and recover.

I didn't punish her (how would you punish a crab?) because she was exhibiting a natural behavior. She had a very strong need for a different shell coupled with the irritability that comes with an impending molt. None of my offerings were to her liking. Instead I got on the computer and ordered some shells. I got the one inch apple murex from The Crabbage Patch first and it went right into the tank.

Yesterday morning I woke up to find this running around my tank. It took me awhile to figure out what had happened.

Yep, that's an extremely freshly molted PP, still pale, moved into an apple murex. But! NOT the apple murex from the Crabbage Patch. This was much too small and a little darker.

I looked around the tank and didn't fine the apple murex from the crabbage patch. I deduced, hopefully, that Miss Viola Pinchy Pants had moved into it.



and she had! Hopefully this will end some of the aggression issues. Honestly, the little PP that moved into her old shell is in a bit of a spot simply because it is in an apple murex and that is what she likes. However, I'm hoping that happiness with her new shell will keep her from attacking anyone else for awhile. Oh, and she's gone back to her usual hidey-crab behavior.

Update: To date (late september) the Viola has not exhibited that sort of aggression again.

It's always a sad day when we lose one of our little ones, no matter what the pet. I'd love to proclaim that if you do everything right, get all the equipment, feed all the right foods, that it will never happen to you, but we all know that sadly, that just isn't true. Even if it is just old age, eventually we will lose one.

I recently lost a hermit crab to PPS. I was really pulling for him but he just didn't make it. The question then becomes, what do you do with a dead hermit crab.

Well, first and formost, be sure that he is dead. A hermit crab in the middle of a molt can look suspiciously like a dead crab. Even worse, an exoskeleton can look like a dead crab to a new owner and get the whole package thrown out, newly molted crab and all.

Simon sat near the water dish for over two weeks. Even while I was away on holiday he sat there and was alive, if very lethargic, when I returned. I kept a close eye on him when he stopped moving, hoping for a surface molt. At this point the best way to tell if the crab is dead is to use your nose. A dead crab smells like a dead fish and the smell gets progressively worse.

A molting crab can have an odor about it but it does not increase over time. Last night I detected a slightly fishy odor and this morning, it was much stronger and the crab had not moved for 3 days. Sadly, I knew it was time.

The next thing I did may seem strange and really is a personal decision but I placed Simon in a ziploc bag and put him in the freezer. This was to ensure that he was in fact dead. Now, I was already 99.99% sure that he was but if there was even the tiniest chance I would rather have him pass quickly then to wake up underground or in a trashbag. Like I said, this is my choice and something you might opt not to do.

The next issue that you must deal with is the shell. Often you will notice that a crab has died when it falls out of it's shell completely or dies after leaving its shell on its own. Other crabs die in their shells. For crabs who die in their shells you must decide whether or not you wish to try to salvage the shell. This is totally a personal choice and there is no right answer. I personally do not have the heart to remove a crab from it's shell after it has died, although the few that I have had the misfortune to lose all were small and the shell was not that valuable. Except one. Clancy, my first jumbo died in his big tapestry turbo. He was so special to me that I could not bear to "de-shell" him before I let him go.

De-shelling is about what you might think. I'm not going to give you a how-to because I've never done it but I'm sure that you get the idea. Using some sort of tool you manipulate the crab out of its shell.

Once you have gotten to this point you need to decide how to proceed. You only have a couple of options at your disposal. You can either place your crab into the garbage or bury him. Never flush dead pets down the toilet, you risk introducing bacteria into the water supply. It's always better to dispose of it some other way. I usually place the dead crab in the garbage. I've never been much of a pet-burier.

Losing a pet is never easy, even the tiniest creature has value. How we take care of them in life and in death reflects upon us as caregivers and responsible pet owners.

It is a common problem that most new and many experienced crabbers experience during their crab keeping adventure. You get a new crab and after a few days in your tank he becomes listless, he stops acting to protect himself, stops eating, and often will sit in one spot for long periods of time. It's been a long time since I've had a crab suffering from Post Purchase Syndrome. My newest group of four large Ecuadorians though, has produced one of these little guys. I've watched and waited as he sits on this shell near my large water pool for the last 5 days. He's alive but extremely lethargic. My only hope at this point is that he is preparing to molt rather than that he is in the throws of PPS.

Post Purchase Stress/Syndrome happens when a crab has difficulty making the metabolic changes from being in the wild to being in captivity. The majority of PPS deaths occur in tanks that have less than optimal humidity and temperature but it can happen to the most experienced crabber. One important thing to remember is that PPS shouldn't be used as a catch-all for hermit crab death. PPS is something that happens with the first couple of weeks that you have a new crab. Sometimes a PPS crab will die during its first molt which may take place later, but you simply cannot blame PPS for deaths weeks and months later. If you've got unexplained deaths later, stop and reassess your tank for problems.

So what do you do about PPS when it happens to one of your crabs? You will get a LOT of different sorts of answers. Some people will tell you to bath them, mist them, stick them in a dark tank by themselves. None of these things work very well. A crab that has spent a long time in a pet store will benefit from spending time in a tank with lower humidity than is standard, slowly raising it every three days or so. This method was created and tested by Sue Latell from the Conobitae Research Site and you can read that article in it's entirety here.

Don't bath a PPS crab or mist them. Don't place them in a dark isolation tank. The light cycle is very important for all crabs, especially the sick ones, the best thing you can do if you decide to isolate your PPS crab is to provide them with a strong light cycle and a place to hide if they want to get away from the light.

Sometimes the best we can do is watch and wait. That can be the hardest part. At least bathing makes us feel like we are *doing* something, however, it's the crabs health we need to put first, no matter how fretful we feel.

UPDATE: 12/31/07  The little Ecuadorian that I had taken to calling Simon did not make it. He hung on for a long time and in the end began exhibiting the death smell that got stronger and stronger and I knew that he was gone. Thanks for the good thoughts everyone.