HCA: Hermit Crab Association

I'm new to crabbing in general and its exciting. Ive got my first crabs on the 31st of December and one already molted, with 3 others molting right now.

I've read around that PP's can have red or black eyes, its just a genetic thing. One of the crabs I have that hasn't molted yet, and has one purple and one black eye. She's been lethargic so I'm not quite sure if that's a pre-molt sign, possible eye problems or just natural genetics.

She has been eating and moving around ocassionally, but is in a shell too small for her and I haven't been able to convince her to move in any of the available shells.

I think that rather common in PP's. Interesting to see over time if her eye's become one uniform colour or they "stay the same".
I always wondered if the eye colour thing is two sub species of PP's... haha, probably not!

I don't really think it's a sub-species thing. I dunno, we'll see. But I'll keep an eye on the colors

Eye color can be unique to a species. Straws for example have compound-looking eyes that are reminiscent of a fly's. I've heard of Viola eyes behind described as hematite. Es are generally black but they can also be opalescent.

With PPs, eye color ranges from red to black, and the purple color would be in the middle of that range. It seems to be random what color eyes they'll have when the eyes are normal looking and shiny. I haven't noticed the eye colors on my crabs changing over the years, but to be honest I never paid very close attention past the first couple of years. I know that Gojira came with red eyes and over five years later they're still red.

PPs can also have dual colored eyes - one red & one black or one black & one purple. That also seems to stick with them and doesn't change from molting, at least a few molts anyway!

An injured eye looks cloudy, smaller than the other, or shriveled. It's not always immediately noticeable, but it's often to where you can tell something isn't right once you start watching them more.

Oh okay, thank you so much. That's actually pretty cool