HCA: Hermit Crab Association

Today is Day Seven. They are one week old. I'm barely keeping up with everything else in my life, but the larval hermits seem to be doing well. I haven't had time to do daily updates in here(sorry!), but I have been doing my best to keep info going up on my website, at least. If you want to catch up...

Day Two: The double kreisel is working well. The hardest part about it is going to be keeping it clean. I fed three times today, small amounts, but they could (and should) have been smaller amounts even. Overfeeding is a problem I have to keep in check. Even if it seems like super small amounts, th...

And this is a somewhat blurry slo-mo, but if you are patient, you can see a couple of zoea swim by, furiously using their legs and swimmerets, which surprised me. I didn't think they were active swimmers until later stages, but this is Day One.

https://youtu.be/642HrvlWP74

Not out of season for Caribbean crabs. Mine have been pretty consistent mating on or around the July /August full moon. Here they are "migrating" yesterday. All is quiet in the tat today.

https://youtu.be/WsxDOer5NUg

Not sure if I should start a new thread or not, but as of today I'm waiting on four females with eggs to drop any time now and I plan to give rearing them another go. I've been gearing up for this ever since last summer's failed attempt--I've been selling crab dishes and dehydrated foods to help fun...

Yay!! Thanks so much for the extensive recap. Studying all the different attempts and techniques is what I feel sure will finally get us there.

Oh, wow!! That's fantastic!!

Oops! @hermiesgaurdian I lost track of the threads (happens to me a lot, I fear). :P It depends on how specialized you want the dishes to be. If you just want simple, small, and round (with no glaze), I can produce those for $4 each. And if they are small enough, they'll fit in a small flat-rate box...

Actually I don't anymore. Lol. I read that it may be slippery for them so I switched to small terra cotta saucers. I wish I could find smaller than 4". I use 2 now, for the foraging effect. And a shell for either peanut butter or honey. Not trying to push anything here, @StellaCrab, but I'm a potte...

@captainb if you will message me your school address, I will send a care package for your students and their crabs. When is your last day of school before summer break?

I love when they get that humped back. That's at least stage three, if I remember correctly. (Which would be for PPs, though, and Perlatus has one fewer larval stage...so ignore me.) At any rate, good job! Have you noticed a large number of sheds in the water on particular days? Don't let the heavy ...

I had some issues with brine shrimp as well. They ate them, but they were messy and I never did figure out how to hatch them separately--at least not often enough to feed them newly hatched brine shrimp every day. Still, I'm excited for you! This is new territory all the way around, and you might ju...

So cool! I love these random things they do. Mysterious little buggers.

This time of year has always been a pretty consistent "EVERYBODY MOLT!!" time of year in my tanks. (There is so much digging going on behind me right now--noisy li'l diggers!) A few of the crabs don't seem to adapt to this cycle (the smaller ones who molt more often and faster, and this one bigger o...

Oh, also, I believe most people doing this have found that a slightly warmer water temperature actually encourages them to move through the stages more quickly with no ill effects. There is some disagreement on the temperature issue, I know, so it's ultimately up to you, but I am planning to make 78...