
Hello! I'm brand-spankin' new. I just got my hermies on the 8th. I got three, and I'm fairly sure they're all purple pinchers. Two came in painted shells, which I'm unhappy with, but Nausicaa - my blue shelled brave baby - is big enough to swap very soon and the other one (yet unnamed) with the painted shell is my biggest and hopefully ready to switch shells soon too.
I originally got a 15gal tank, not knowing that it would be too small. However the day I came home with them I discovered this amazing forum and learned exactly how ignorant I am. So I promptly found a 40gal tank online and got it, with the plan to keep the little one as an isolation tank if needed. The UTH will arrive tomorrow morning, but despite that I switched them to the 40gal tank already because the "hermit crab pad" I got for the small tank is not warm enough and the little tank lost too much heat overnight (it got down to 60!!), whereas the big tank stayed at a solid 70, which I know is cooler than ideal but can do nothing about until tomorrow.
I have ordered shells from the Naples shell company, as I only have 4 for them to choose from right now. I have also ordered four food sample packs from HermiesKitchen and TheHealthyHermit from Etsy to discover what their favorite things are, as well as a cuttlebone, five 6-8" cholla wood pieces, and moss for a pit, which I will put in a suction-cup corner shower caddy that I found at Walmart (I need to get it still, but the other purchases seemed more important and now I'm broke til Friday lol). I gave them radish which they seemed uninterested in on the first day and green grapes yesterday, which I found chewed up this morning (yay!). I have the pellets from the pet store until the samples come, but I'm going to be giving them a variety of things between now and then. I have some shrimp that I originally bought for myself but will use for them too.
Here's my setup so far. The big dish is full of salt water, and the two smaller dishes are freshwater. The hamster wheel came with the small tank and I was going to give it away until I read that they like them on here. I'll be getting craft mesh for it in the near future. I've got plastic wrap on top of the screen, except in the middle where the two lights - which are on a 12hr timer - sit. This seems to be retaining humidity pretty well. How does it look?


I've been reading the care sheets and some of the threads that seemed relevant already. I wish I had found this resource before getting my crabs, but I've been able to remedy my oops very quickly. I'm very excited to have my crabs and to have found this forum.