A classful of soon-to-be new hermit crab owners

[djinniman]

Hello! I am a teacher of gifted kids in Missouri. We voted and decided on hermit crabs as a class pet, and I was thrilled! I had some as a kid and I loved them. We used this site extensively for researching, and the kids helped me make a shopping list. Our order is going out and all the stuff for the crabitat will be here soon!

We are getting the crabs locally, don't want to take any chances with harming the crabs being shipped in cooler weather.

I do have a few questions about care, specific to the classroom setting.

1. Weekends - are the crabs safe, with the weekend-style food pellets left with them on a Friday, over a two day weekend? I'd love to send them with a kid, but I think that would be too traumatic for the crabs. I don't know if the school is heated over the weekend; will the tank heater be enough? I worry about power outages too. Maybe a battery backup for the heater, or is that too paranoid? lol

2. I am a bit worried about leaving the crabs during extended breaks, namely Thanksgiving (5 days) and of course Christmas (2 full weeks). Would taking the crabs home myself to an alternate tank be the best solution here? I live too far away from school and might be out of town for several days during this time so I can't go back to school to check on them. What can I do to make the transport less stressful?

3. Are there any other issues related to the classroom setting I should be aware of?

Thanks in advance for your help, and for the amazing resources here. Very much appreciated!

[soilentgringa]

Hi! Welcome to HCA!
If the crabitat is properly set up and you are able to keep temps and humidity stable with no issues, you should be able to leave the tank for even a week with no problems.
If you've been reading through the care guides, you'll see that pellets are no bueno in general. They contain ingredients that are toxic to the crabs.

I've left my crabs for over a month before while housesitting for an ill relative. I checked on them and changed their waters once or twice a week.
If you have deep bubbler pools, you don't have to do daily water changes and your humidity will benefit as well.
Dried shrimp, veggies, fruits, crickets, eggshells, cuttlebone, and any other dried hermit crab food mixes from some of the vendors on our DIY and product review thread will be just fine while you're away.

It is up to you if you want to take them home over Christmas break as long as they are shipped properly in the cold weather.


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[soilentgringa]

Also- they are not a hands on pet. They are nocturnal and bury themselves for weeks to months to molt. Your students may go for weeks without seeing them, so that is something to take into consideration when it comes to a classroom pet. They aren't cheap or cuddly and the children should not be allowed to handle them as the crabs can get stressed out and the children are at risk of getting some pretty gnarly pinches which I am sure in this day and age some parents would get extremely irate over.
(My 8 year old (then 7) was pinched on the first day!)

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[Laurie LeAnn]

Food left in a crab tank for extended period of times can grow mold that is harmful to crabs. I would not leave them UN attended for more than 2 days with out changing their food. The humidity makes their food mushy. You can leave cuttle bone, worm casting, dried maple leaves, calcium sand in a dish it will be fine. Kids can stress crabs out when they first get to a class room. You want to tell them they need to be quiet and just look.. you won't want to handle for the first month. After that short brief periods can they come out but the lack of humidity in the air out side of the tank is hard on their gills that they use to breath.. remember they don't call them purple pinchers for nothing..if a student gets pinched and they drop the crab on the floor you can actually injury or kill them.

[soilentgringa]

Mold is not harmful to crabs. It can be a nuisance to humans but it is not going to hurt the hermits. Feeding dry foods placed near the UTH will prevent the food from getting soggy. Many crabbers leave their hermits while going on vacation with no incident. The dry food can be left in the tank for longer periods of time.

Hermit crabs are scavengers and routinely eat decaying organisms in the wild, including moldy fruit/vegetable matter, leaf litter, and rotten carcasses.

Some dried food left in the tat for a week isn't going to harm them at all...in fact, many of us have discovered that our crabs like some food items when they're a little too ripe better than fresh!

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[djinniman]

Thanks all for the advice. Finally got the crabitat up and running and the crabs appear to be enjoying it so far!

[wodesorel]

Eh, I'm a little old school and don't see much of a problem with handling hermits. I do agree that until they molt for the first time it should be hands off and low stress - a lot of people don't realize they are collected from the wild and are wild animals, it takes them a while to adjust to life in captivity and not all can make that adjustment. That first molt lets you know that they've settled in and can continue to grow and heal for years to come.

They usually sound like the perfect children's pet in theory, but they are very much a specialized exotic species. Since they are tropical, temperature extremes are deadly. Low humidity is deadly. Because of the way they grow by molting, being disturbed while underground is also deadly. Heck, just being collected and brought home can be deadly for them. They're a niche pet and really should be compared to specialty reptiles in terms of care and lifespan, but because they're cheap and can be collected for pennies they're sold everywhere. Like the others have said, it's weeks underground when it comes time for molting and it's not something that can be put off. Most owners and their kids will loose several crabs for varying reasons and then get bored within a year or two because there isn't much that can be done other than watching them in their tank and then waiting months for them to be done molting.

They are a GREAT teaching tool. Crustaceans are poorly understood, as are exotic pets in general! Do it right and hopefully some of your kids will be inspired to check out biological sciences AND you'll be making a huge difference toward their attitudes of pet keeping in the future.

Schools can be an iffy place for hermits. Like you already were talking about, the time spent away and temperature is going to be key to keeping them alive. They cannot be below 70 degrees at all, and will do better at 80. Keeping humidity in check is important or they'll suffocate when it gets too dry. Keeping them fed with food that isn't going to mold over or spoil too badly in the heat and humidity is important or they could try to eat each other. The big one is water - the most deaths that occur with vacations have to do with the crabs dehydrating to death because the water evaporated, or was spilled, or the sitter didn't fill the dishes or the substrate dried out. You probably will need to transport them over breaks to keep them safe, but if they're buried then you have to take the entire tank as one piece so as not to disturb them. My husband can tote around a 10 gallon that has the right depth of sand and cocofiber (half filled) but I never could! It's also a danger since the glass can break. However, digging them up isn't an option.

As you can see, it can be done in schools, but it's such a rough environment it's not exactly conducive to the type of steady care hermits need and the way they behave. Watch them closely and try to adapt as needed. With proper care those crabs will be around when your current kids' future kids are in school!

[Crabber85]

White food mold is pretty harmless to the crabs but green and black mold are seriously toxic and don't often occur in hermitcrab enclosures you would had to have introduced those mold spores into the enclosure through some kind of direct or indirect contact with the mold say if it were growing in the walls or ceiling titles it might find its way into the hermitcrab enclosure and would pose a risk to the crabs.

Mold that occurs in the hermitcrabs molt pockets is a whole other ball game because it can actually overgrow the molter being that the crabs soft body is so moist at that point and thats all it really takes is the presence of moisture to get the mold jumping.

I've dealt with this in the past helped a cousin of mine set up a hermitcrab tank and even bought him two PP's while I was on vacation and he had some serious issues with mold in the tank because his house was effected it had mold growing in the walls and those spores were finding their way into the enclosure and through the hermits digging activities had been mixed well into the substrate and then I get a phone call one day to please come over the smaller of the two crabs he had had gone down to molt and left a nice window and you could clearly see the mold all over the molt pocket and crab so I set him up an emergency iso and helped him get the issue resolved he then decided that he didn't want the crabs and gave them to me because they were too much work, he was 17 at the time I really thought he could handle a ten gallon aquarium with two little PP's.

I dropped over eighty dollars on setting his ten gallon up properly and he had it for about six weeks and it suddenly became too much of a responsibility he said they were too care intensive.

They've been with me since 2011 and have quadrupled in size.

As far as the food goes hermitcrabs are biologically pre-programmed to avoid foods they have tasted or smelled for up to forty eight hours this is to ensure that the get a varied and complete diet in the wild so they will go without eating if the same food gets left two or more days in a row, dried or powdered foods can last in the enclosure for three days at most and then should be replaced with something different but moist or wet foods need to be replaced in twenty four hours to prevent spoilage and to reduce contamination from food rot of the enclosure.

Hermitcrabs will bury pieces of uneaten food to go back for later this is called a larder in some circles but with us constantly offering fresh food on a regular basis they often times forget about the buried or hidden food and that will lead to mold growth, bacterial blooms and a pretty nasty stench especially if you offer shrimp or crab bits believe me I've been there and it isn't nice.lol

Thats why some of us like to do a fasting day once a week where we skip feeding the crabs to force them to eat the food they'd previously hidden and then depending on the size of the enclosure doing a scrape of the substrate surface once or twice a week this helps to keep pollution down in the enclosure keeping it smelling better for longer.

Personally I'm going on five years with no actually substrate change out I'll do a good deep clean every six months or so and take out about of inch or two of substrate and replace that with new play sand or ee and the tank is good to go for six more months and my substrate does not smell dank or off it still smells new.

I have noticed that in four months time or so the substrate seems to become packed down and settled so it looses some depth and so a good fluff and stirring up and adding a little more substrate in seems to do the trick.

I've left my hermitcrabs for up to five days with no problems I just had some one come in twice during that time to change the food out but they never had to touch the waters because I use bigger deeper pools so the water tends to last for a week or so before I need to take the pools out and completely clean them out wiping them down thoroughly and rinsing the rocks off.

I do agree with what the others have had to say hermitcrabs are a little more time consuming and care intensive and most sellers would have you believe so being in a school isn't going to be the ideal scenario but if you can adjust to what the crabs needs are and be flexible enough this can work.

As for keeping the crabs heated you can use an Ultratherm heat pad and set it up on a battery powered back up in case of power failures and that will go a long way to keeping them safe.

Ultratherm pads use an instant on technology so that the pad is already producing heat the minute its plugged in and powered unlike the old coil style UTH pads like Zoo-Med makes which have to warm up for up to seven hours after being plugged in before they start to produce any heat and then they don't produce nearly same level of heat as the safer Ultratherm.

Most battery powered backups are only going to be good for twelve to twenty four hours so they won't provide a long term back up solution but will buy you some precious time to get the crabs moved to a safe location.

When I was in school in the Quest(the early 2000's version of the gifted) program our class pets were hamsters the teacher had a breeding pair which she left together over the Thanks Giving holiday and when we came back there were close to twenty pups in the litter so she had to give them out as Holiday gifts and I got two of them Chip and Dale and had them for three years before they died from cancer they both developed tumors and died from them.

[djinniman]

Well, yesterday morning, I came in and the "Big Guy", much bigger than the five other PPs, had lost a leg. I have had trouble getting the temps to stay above 72 degrees, and so after school I went to the petstore and got a larger UTH to put on the back of our 20 gallon tank. WIth this second UTH alongside the first smaller one, all but a few inches of the back glass are covered. I was hopeful that this would be enough to keep the temp up, but this morning the temp was still 72 when I came in to school. Big Guy had dropped his large pincher and another leg, and did not respond at all to a light misting. I think PPS got him.

Really worrying about the temps, I know the Ultratherm heaters would probably be better but I don't have a local source. It's a long weekend coming up, and I won't be around to check on them from Friday evening to Tuesday morning. I just don't know what else I can do to keep temp and humidity stable that long!

[Mr. Crabby Pants]

Try insulating your tank. Any area that doesn't have an UTH can be covered with Aluminum foil and insulating foam or people apparently use card board over the foil too.

Also, keep in mind the UTH can take 8-24 hours to bring the tank temps up.

Sorry about the Big Guy, good luck!

[Crabinski]

Really worrying about the temps, I know the Ultratherm heaters would probably be better but I don't have a local source.

Ultratherms are sold only online. The best priices and shipping fee are through ReptileBasics but the largest variety of sizes is through the Bean Farm on Amazon.

[wodesorel]

If the UTHs aren't working, take it back and demand a refund! Many of the store brands don't run hot enough and cannot be safely insulated, make sure to check the directions. I've had good luck with Flukers and Zoomeds.

[Crabber85]

The way standard coil style UTH pads like the ones that All Things Living, Zoo-Med and Flukers make is that they slowly heat the glass where they are mounted referred to as the point of contact and then as the air bumps against the glass it is heated by virtue of that contact which is passive heating and the pads are only designed to increase the tank temps from seven to ten degrees above the ambient room temp so either you have a very faulty UTH or the ambient temp in the class room is taking a serious nose dive into the sixties or fifties if thats the case then insulating the tank will get you better results by blocking the cold outside air preventing it from making contact with the glass zapping the heat in the tank.

[djinniman]

Thanks all for the advice. I am wondering if the room gets very cool overnight. I arrive every morning and the thermostat is set to a toasty 72 degrees, but who knows how low it gets in the wee hours?

Some good news: I made arrangements with the custodian, who will be working Fri/Mon/Tue when school is out this weekend. In exchange for a cold Dr. Pepper, she will fill the waters, mist the habitat, and check the temp and humidity levels for me. I cut a very mushy small apple up and crushed some eggshells on top, and think that should get them through just fine. The custodian has helped another teacher with several salt water aquariums and even frogs in similar circumstances so she is very trustworthy!

I got a small fleece throw to place over the back and top, and some bubble wrap for the sides to help with the temperature. I wish I'd had time to set up the "crab-cam" webcam for the kids before I left so I could double check on them that way. These crabs sure are addicting!

[djinniman]

I got a call from the custodian yesterday. One of the crabs had died over the weekend. She told me the temps were around 70, but the humidity was at 50%.

I came in this morning, and I saw the dead crab, out of its shell, near the food dish. The shell was in the salt water bowl. Two legs were just outside the salt water bowl. Not sure exactly what happened, but I am taking steps to fix the humidity.

Picked up an air pump, tubing, and air stone to put in the fresh water pool. I am also going to seal the screen lid entirely; previously I have only been covering it with a cardboard and the fleece throw. I am planning to use duct tape to seal it up... but how much should I leave untaped? With the bubbler, do I even need to leave air holes? I figure maybe an inch or two, just in case?

Also, the custodian reassured me that the rooms are heated over the weekends, so that I don't have to worry about at least. Even with the 5-60 gallon heater, it's still too cool. I will be ordering an Ultratherm as soon as possible. Pretty frustrating to have lost two crabs in just over a week.