My hermit crabs

Thanks guys!

I honestly can't remember why I got them in the first place which is really odd, I usually remember stuff like that. I remember my first pair 6 years ago was Penny and Sandy, I even remember what their shells looked like. Sandy was killed by Penny in a shell fight, it was quite a shock at 11 years old to come home from a sleep over to find your crab ripped to pieces. From then on I got crab after crab after crab and they all lasted a few months. After maybe a year of that I gave up on owning them until last summer when I found a hermit forum. I still loved them as pets, the only reason I had stopped was due to their short life span with me. When I found the forum and learned that I was doing it all wrong and that I could make them live longer I started wanting them again and when on vacation a beach side store had them and I got my parents to agree to let me keep them again.

I wouldn't call them difficult to keep there is just a lot of BAD information out there on their care. They are sold in two gallon or less critter carriers (or worse those stupid wire cages that hold no humidity at all) and people are told they can stay in those things permanently. they need at least a ten gallon tank (that's what I have and I find it limiting, I can only have three crabs due to the size on mine) They are often sold with gravel or a thin layer or substrate. They need something they can fully bury themselves in so they can molt and they can't do that in gravel or in shallow substrate. They need moist sand or coconut fiber (it must be moist for humidity and so the caves they make when they dig don't collapse and suffocate them). Close attention should be payed to temperature and humidity (80 degrees and 80% humidity are about perfect). Those painted shells they are sold in contain paint that is toxic if ingested so they should be kept with only natural shells to change into. Also the food that is sold for them is harmful, it contains preservatives and hermies are related to bugs so are sensitive to chemicals. They should be fed real food, I feed one fruit, one veggie, on meat, egg shell and some source of fat (nuts or oatmeal soaked in extra virgin olive oil) if the meat did not have any (like when I feed shrimp). They also require both fresh and salt water (marine tank salt, not table salt of course) in dishes deep enough for them to bathe. All water must be dechlorinated.

So for me they require enough upkeep to stay interesting and engaging (you really should not do too much handling as stress kills them more than anything else) but not so much that you constantly kill them. Once you pass the two month or so mark and still have them alive and healthy you should be good for a while. if they die in those first couple of months PPS is most likely the cause. All hermits are taken from the wild, shipped to suppliers, then stores where they live in downright criminal conditions (Petco is actually not too bad in many places) and then to your home. It's a lot of stress and does kill them.

They are new to the pet world and live longer in the wild than in captivity because people do not know how to care for them properly, we cannot breed them in captivity either (some have been able to get the hermies to breed through miming tides and other environmental changes that occur through the year but the babies don't live long), it's a shame that they are considered by many to be a throw away pet. if you think they would be good pets for you then definitely look into them, they are interesting critters.