Good Morning from Atlanta GA! New Crab owner ;)
Posted: Mon Mar 20, 2017 7:32 am
Good Morning Everyone!
I just wanted to introduce myself and say that I'm happy to be on this board. I am an avid follower of the free section on craigslist. We have furnished much of our house using unwanted items posted on the free section there and I have found some really great stuff. This is how I found the new additions to our family in the form of little hermit crabs.
The crabs came to us in a 10 gallon tank from a free ad on craigslist. My two special needs toddlers find them to be amazing! After about a week in their normal tank, adjusting to our home, we moved them over to our empty 55-gallon tank. Before picking up our new free hermit crabs, I read anything I could online for hours, to make sure that I knew enough about them. I have tried to follow to the letter everything that I have read about their care and environment.
When making the switch over to the 55 gallon though, one of the crabs did not make it. I am assuming that he was just overstressed since i closely followed everything i had read. I did set up an isolation tank for him in hopes that he would make it. It has been a few weeks now in the new tank and the other four crabs seem to be doing fine. Since I have toddlers who are obsessed with cartoons we named the crabs after the StoryBots characters. That is respectively Beep, Bing, Bang, Boop and Bo. So I guess now it's just Beep, Bing, Bang and Boop.
I have had so much fun setting up this habitat for our crabs. We live on about one and a half acres of land with plenty of trees and flowers. This has provided an excellent source for tank decor and the crabs seem to love everything that we have put in there for them to climb on. This has also provided us with an excellent way of getting my children to come in from playing outside. Our 55-gallon crabitat is in the mud room beside the front door. Since adding the crabs to our family we now keep a small plastic sand pail right beside the front door, which we use to collect flowers as we're playing outside. The kids love doing this because as soon as we go inside they get to feed the grass, flowers, and leaves to our crabs. I know it may sound simple but it really helps my children feel like they are responsible when they get to toss the flowers into the top of the tank.
Aside from this the crabs also get a variety of commercial and homemade foods that came along with them when they were given to us, as well as any fresh fruits and vegetables that we are eating during our family meals.
We are a family of four with two special-needs toddlers ages 2 and 3 years old. My husband is the breadwinner and I am a stay-at-home mom. Right now we are preparing to homeschool. My children have therapy 3 to 4 days a week to help with their developmental delays and difficulties. I am now in the process of setting up a home-school classroom and curriculum. I have plans to start our homeschooling journey as soon as possible, but definitely by August of this year. I'm very excited about having the hermit crabs as our class pets. There have already been so many great experiences that my children have had with these new crabs and it's only just been a few weeks now.
The hermit crabs, so far, seem to be exactly what our family needed as far as low maintenance and educational pets. My children are learning about responsibility, different habitats, etc. and their speech and language has improved from talking about their new interest in the hermit crabs. Every time someone new comes over to our house the kids have to show them their new hermit crabs.
I just wanted to tell y'all a little bit about myself and say thank you for such a wonderful resource to help with the care of our new family additions.
Take Care,
CrabbyMommy2017
I just wanted to introduce myself and say that I'm happy to be on this board. I am an avid follower of the free section on craigslist. We have furnished much of our house using unwanted items posted on the free section there and I have found some really great stuff. This is how I found the new additions to our family in the form of little hermit crabs.
The crabs came to us in a 10 gallon tank from a free ad on craigslist. My two special needs toddlers find them to be amazing! After about a week in their normal tank, adjusting to our home, we moved them over to our empty 55-gallon tank. Before picking up our new free hermit crabs, I read anything I could online for hours, to make sure that I knew enough about them. I have tried to follow to the letter everything that I have read about their care and environment.
When making the switch over to the 55 gallon though, one of the crabs did not make it. I am assuming that he was just overstressed since i closely followed everything i had read. I did set up an isolation tank for him in hopes that he would make it. It has been a few weeks now in the new tank and the other four crabs seem to be doing fine. Since I have toddlers who are obsessed with cartoons we named the crabs after the StoryBots characters. That is respectively Beep, Bing, Bang, Boop and Bo. So I guess now it's just Beep, Bing, Bang and Boop.
I have had so much fun setting up this habitat for our crabs. We live on about one and a half acres of land with plenty of trees and flowers. This has provided an excellent source for tank decor and the crabs seem to love everything that we have put in there for them to climb on. This has also provided us with an excellent way of getting my children to come in from playing outside. Our 55-gallon crabitat is in the mud room beside the front door. Since adding the crabs to our family we now keep a small plastic sand pail right beside the front door, which we use to collect flowers as we're playing outside. The kids love doing this because as soon as we go inside they get to feed the grass, flowers, and leaves to our crabs. I know it may sound simple but it really helps my children feel like they are responsible when they get to toss the flowers into the top of the tank.
Aside from this the crabs also get a variety of commercial and homemade foods that came along with them when they were given to us, as well as any fresh fruits and vegetables that we are eating during our family meals.
We are a family of four with two special-needs toddlers ages 2 and 3 years old. My husband is the breadwinner and I am a stay-at-home mom. Right now we are preparing to homeschool. My children have therapy 3 to 4 days a week to help with their developmental delays and difficulties. I am now in the process of setting up a home-school classroom and curriculum. I have plans to start our homeschooling journey as soon as possible, but definitely by August of this year. I'm very excited about having the hermit crabs as our class pets. There have already been so many great experiences that my children have had with these new crabs and it's only just been a few weeks now.
The hermit crabs, so far, seem to be exactly what our family needed as far as low maintenance and educational pets. My children are learning about responsibility, different habitats, etc. and their speech and language has improved from talking about their new interest in the hermit crabs. Every time someone new comes over to our house the kids have to show them their new hermit crabs.
I just wanted to tell y'all a little bit about myself and say thank you for such a wonderful resource to help with the care of our new family additions.
Take Care,
CrabbyMommy2017
