On June 26th, 1998 we got another hermit crab and he was going to be "Big Red" but my son prefers "Sam" instead so that is his name now. This one is a lot bigger than both of the others. They are now living in a plastic cage with some colored rocks in the bottom and a piece of Choya wood to climb on.
They like to get a lukewarm water bath by being dunked into a plastic cup and then they stretch way out. They like to crawl around on the kitchen floor too. Before I got food made for them I used to put in a piece of apple and Climber really liked to eat that. I put in some real sand for them to burrow under and Hider liked that but it kept falling out of the cage.
From what I have read they are clean and fairly harmless unless they pinch you if they think they are going to fall off of your hand.
It is fun to watch them eat and crawl.
We got another hermit crab that my son named "Heart". He has a yellow shell and is small. All four of them have a larger home that is a wired cage. They don't seem to ever climb on the sides of it. They have two sponges and a water dish and extra shells.
So far, all of them except Heart have changed shells. When Sam moved into a bigger shell, Climber went into his old one and then switched back to his again.
Sometimes I spray them with a water bottle. Update - I now only have one hermit crab still alive. The other three died recently. The biggest one is all alone now until I buy a couple more soon. Heart was the first to die followed by Hider who climbed out of his shell and then Climber fell out of his shell last. I cannot understand why they lived all through the winter and then something happened to them? UPDATE: My son got another hermit crab and named it "Crabby" but it died soon after he was put in with Sam. We think that he felt his home being invaded and he fought with the new crab. One day we found a leg in the cage and then the big pincher and later after putting Crabby in a separate cage his other three legs fell off. This has been very sad for us because we liked the new crab a lot. Today - July 9th - we plan on getting a few more crabs but not putting them in the same cage with Sam just in case he would hurt them. We now have Herman and Tarzan. Crawler just died recently. Sam died a while ago.
How To Take Care of Your Crabs
Other Hermit Crab Pages
a personal view on these pets
links to more sites with info
