Streaking hermit crab

Date: 2010.03.06 | Category: I'm just saying | Tags:

My daughter has three hermit crabs:  Sheldon, Angel and Ginger. A few days ago Ginger decided to take her shell off and she’s been streaking around the crabitat ever since.

A naked hermit crab is an ugly hermit crab, and of course I’m fascinated by this because since she took her shell off she’s running all over the tank day and night. Prior to this the crabs just laid around and did nothing 100% of the time. Absolutely nothing. It’s very boring as far as pets go.

And then there’s the whole crabitat environment that we’ve been dealing with. One substrate is not like the other and we can’t randomly grab a brick of it off the shelf at Pet Smart and fill the crabitat with it. Trying to keep the humidity and temp levels right where they need to be has been a total pain in the butt.

Of course I blogged about the fact that Ginger is shell-less and was quickly contacted by someone who told me that a naked hermie is a stressed hermie and one thing led to another, I did a lot of hermit crab research, spent $58.28 at Pet Smart on crabitat stuff, then came home and worked on the crabitat for two hours.

Here is the finished crabitat. While I was using 100% moistened coconut fiber it wasn’t holding the humidity levels up high enough. This time I used plain old reptile sand at a ratio of 5 to 1 with moistened coconut fiber. Then I blended it all together, built it up really high in the back so they can burrow and lower in the front so they’d have a climbing terrain. They’ve got a fresh water dish for drinking, a sea salt bathing dish, a couple flat shells filled with food, a log to hide under, a fake plant to hide in and/or climb on (they are supposed to enjoy climbing), and then a lot of shells to choose from — they’ve had all of this prior to last night, the only thing I changed was the substrate.

And now the crabs are moving all over the place. Angel’s tried on Ginger’s shell for a while, then went back to her own shell.

You Can’t Make Me Wear A Shell Ginger

So far so good, this morning the humidity level was still at 80%, and the temps are holding good at 70F. There’s a reptile heater under the tank, we also have a heating lamp, but someone broke the bulb yesterday when she dropped it.

Oops.

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