HCA: Hermit Crab Association

Hey Y'all,

I've been keeping crabs for a long time and for a while I fell into rescuing, rehabbing and rehoming them. This was back in 2011-ish? I don't remember. I passed most of my crabs on to new owners before my divorce in 2013. Pre-divorce I had literally 100's of crabs in 20-30 tanks all over the house.

I kept one 40G breeder tank with about 5 crabs. It's been set up without much change since before 2010. I think I have 5 crabs. I haven't seen them all at once in years, so I'm not sure. My last known death was of my 2nd largest in a baseball size shell. I just found it dead one day that was 3-4 years ago.

Anyway, I haven't changed my crab keeping methods in over 10 years, probably longer. Their substrate is all compacted and I want to update the tank by adding new sub and more modern decor. What are y'all doing for your tanks nowadays? I have a pile of wood, a shell shop, and two pools of water.

What's new and exciting in crabitat decor? Help a gal and her old crabs out!

I have had my crabs for ten years too. Honestly not a lot has changed as far as the basics - and if it's still working for you, don't make any drastic changes!

Kids these days have come up with some cool décor things LOL - check out MotorCrab's (and his partner Xenocrab) posts and store - they are masters of plastic canvas. And AussieJJ has a plant guide that is very comprehensive, it's new-ish over in the care sheets section.

Thanks! "Back in the Day" plastic was a no-no in crabs tanks, especially PVC. Metal of any kind was also the devil! I think the only allowable plastic was wedding cake pillars--so that's different! Even plastic water bowls were "outgassing pools of death" or some such.

LOL, one of my pet peeves is people using the word 'toxic' for anything they think is harmful. But I think 'pools of death' is now my favorite term!