You Learn What's Best For Your Crabs And You
My website is on my experience on caring for Coenobita Clypeatus/Purple Pinchers. There's information out there on hermit crabs that has been helpful to me when I got my first two crabs. For more information please visit my Links page.
Molting or Destressing, they bury themselves to do both, it can be nerve racking for beginners, I worried and wondered if my crabs were okay and then anywhere from three to six weeks they came up! Smaller crabs molt more often, than bigger crabs. Small crabs can take three to five weeks and bigger crabs take six to eight weeks. Some people think that you should put molters in an ISO tank, which I did with two of them but just couldn't keep up with them! And thought it was better to leave them in my main tank and so far that has worked. I've had many successful molts in my main tank. I keep the sand deeper on one end of my tank, with the water bowls, the other part of the tank stays dry, that's where I keep the food and extra shells.
I use to bathe them when I brought them home and put them in the ISO tank but now I don't. I find that they're already stressed out enough from what they went through at the pet store so why stress them out more. I change my tank and make thing different once a month it keeps them happy having it moved around and them having new things to explore and climb on. I've got several levels for them to climb on, and three coconut huts. I have a bubbler bowl for their salt water and I keep natural small sponges in both water bowls.(which helps with the humidity) I change the sponges once a week, I rinse the sponges out let them dry, I get another clean sponge microwave it for 30 seconds (it kills any bacterial that may be in the sponge) and put them in their bowls. Keep several spongeshandy so you can exchange them weekly. If you haven't seen your crabs in a while just put fresh food in their bowl and watch them come to dinner! Of course if they're molting you'll have to wait for them to come up when they're done.
Temperature and Humidity are important. The first few months I had a hard time with it and worried about them. I could keep the temp at 69-71 degrees but couldn't get it any higher and couldn't get the humidity right either! I ended up buying a different light fixture for the top of my tank that I could put two light bulbs in and use one side for light and the other side for heat. Which keeps my tank at 77 in the winter months. I don't need a heat light in the summer months.
I ended up buying a humidifier at, Pet Discounters Humidifier
I have a lid but it helps to keep a towel over the top of my tank in the winter and take it off in the summer! It depends on the size of your tank to how well the humidifier works.
Make your own humidifer out of a plastic jar, I drilled two holes in the top of the jar, (air tubing should fit tight in the jar) Then attach one end of the tubing to the air pump and the other end of the tube through the lid into the jar put an air stone on it put it in about an inch from the bottom of the jar. Fill the jar with dechlorinated water but not all the way up, you need some air space. Put the lid on the jar and then put the other length of the tube through the other hole in the top of the jar, this tube is not to be in the water, put the other end in your crabitat. This is an inexpensive way to help with the humidity.
Large Sea Sponge in a shell or bowl, keep it damp will also help with the humidity.
I don't bathe my crabs, they bathe themselves in both the salt and regular water. If you think your crabs have mites then bathe them in luke warm salt water by putting them in the bowl for a minute, they should try to get out if they don't then take them out so they won't drown, look for mites in the water. If you find some then you'll have to completely clean your tank, don't use soap, just plain water and dry it by wiping it down (to be sure you've gotten all the mites out). You'll need to bathe your crabs two or three times in fresh salt water each time till you see no mites. I've seen crabs at a pet store that didn't know what they were doing and the condition of their tank was awful and seen bugs in the tank! I didn't buy any crabs there!
Fish Net works good for cleaning the waste out of your tank, just scoop up the sand and shake it till the sand falls through, I keep a bowl that I put the waste in as I'm cleaning, then empty it.
Play sand is inexpensive to use, that's what I use. At first I was using marine and calci sand mix which gets expensive to use! The sand works well for me and my crabs. By putting my water bowls at one end and the food bowls at the other really helps the crabs to have wet & dry sand and is easier to clean, wet sand doesn't go through the fish net very well.
