No we're not really crabby here! But we have crabs. Hermit Crabs. Ok we actually only have 1 crab. We purchased 2 but one of them didn't survive. It was sad. That's him in the bottom photo. His name was Perry! His brother is Sherman, he's a little more shy, he's the dark brown shell on the right in the cup when they came home from the pet store. Dave studied up on the Hermit Crab and gave us all 5 page Essays to read(shhhhh I skimmed, seriously....). For 2 weeks before we brought them home he prepared their home the right sand the right water the right humidity etc. We talked about names for a long time. For awhile D.B. Cooper(the kids watched a show on the history channel and got all excited) was in the running to be Sherman but that name lost out to some character in a book Emily and her friends are reading. Then there was the big day we drove up to a pet store way north of here to buy our pets. I tell you the excitement around here is never ending. We've had Sherman for about 3 weeks now. Perry didn't quite make it a week. But we weren't absolutely sure he wasn't molting for awhile. So he stayed in the tank until we were sure. Sherman is doing well it seems it's hard to tell with hermit crabs. He burries himself in the sand for a couple of days sometimes. Other times he's pearched on top of the log cave thing like he's going to dive off or he's just looking out over his domain? He loves fruit and soaking in the salt water. His shell is so bumpy he can't walk forward into the bowls and such he has to hike himself up with his back legs and pull on his shell to get it to follow. Hopefully he'll choose a different shell type when he molts. The kids, well I think they thought they would be more interactive like hamsters? We still need to go and get a couple of more crabs though. They are apparently very social creatures, with their own species they live in colonies of hundreds in the wild(this is all I got from skimming :-))
So that's the story of our new pets/pet. Have a wonderful day! More projects coming soon!
1 comment:
Your crab is adorable! It's wonderful that you did some research and tried hard to get everything right for them.
Can I suggest a couple things though? The half log you have in there - that is a conifer, and conifers are known irritants to hermit crabs. They could even lead a hermit crab to leave his shell.
Also, hermit crabs will bury for weeks to molt, so many owners assume their crab has died because they haven't seen him in days.
You might want to get some fake greenery and plastic/hemp net/climbing toys for your crab, they love to climb (Purple Pincer crabs are known as "tree crabs") and they feel safer if they have lots of places to hide.
Without places to hide, your crab will be under a lot of stress.
A great website to visit for good information is http://www.hermitcrabparadise.com or http://www.crabstreetjournal.com
Your crab can live for many many years in captivity (oldest known are now 34, Jon and Kate, owned by Carol of Crabworks http://crabworks.angelfire.com/)
They really are more trouble to take care of than pet stores lead you to believe!
Hope I didn't offend, I just see so many people make little mistakes and their crabs die, if only they'd really tried to educate themselves :( Pet stores are HORRIBLE sources for accurate information. Good luck with your little crabs!
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