HCA: Hermit Crab Association

Hello! As the title states, I am working on getting the ball rolling for some service work I am trying to do through my school (if it helps, I attend NYU and you can email me at vv2220@nyu.edu for proof). Below, I will separate the questions into gen questions for crabbers and those with experience rehoming or have insight into other people they know rehoming etc. Also please do note that while I have some plans in place, this is all very early-stages, hence this post, so I really appreciate any thoughts as they will inform my plans a lot. Thanks in advance!

General Questions

1. What was the biggest hurdle to bringing your husbandry to proper care when you first got crabs?

2. What struggles have come and gone since then?

3. Have you attempted outreach and struggled? How so?
3a. How has your experience reaching out to pet stores been, if any?
3b. How has your experience reaching out to misinformed influencers been, if any?
3c. How has your experience reaching out to misinformed irl relations been, if any?

Rehoming related

1. How long did it take you/has it been taking you to get your crabs to their next home?

2. Were you able to save up supplies for this period in advance?
2a. If yes, did they run out too soon, and if so which supplies ran out at which points?

3. Was your decision to rehome mainly time based or financial based? (feel free to give as much context as you would like)

4. What has been hardest in finding a new home? (low demand in area, potential homes not meeting standards, scheduling move, etc)


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Feel free to answer here, email (vv2220@nyu.edu), or Discord DM (@helena#7132) as you prefer.

You can give as little/much info as you want btw! Just one question or all or whatever, hoping to collect as much info as I can get, even in smaller chunks!

General Questions

1. What was the biggest hurdle to bringing your husbandry to proper care when you first got crabs?
When I first got hermit crabs, I was very concerned when they first molted, because I kept finding limbs from exoskeletons everywhere, and one time I found a whole exoskeleton and thought one of my crabs had died (I promptly spread the news that one of my hermit crabs had died to my Mom's entire side of the family before realizing it was actually an exoskeleton haha)

2. What struggles have come and gone since then?
It was tricky when one of my hermit crabs, Crunchy, passed away, it's tricky to try to care for a hermit crab when they're sick or weak, because they're usually so small and fragile and it's hard to figure out what's wrong with them (Unfortunately Crunchy was actually dead, not an exoskeleton , I think he probably died from PPDS)

3. Have you attempted outreach and struggled? How so?
Wait outreach like "save the hermit crabs from Petco!" or something else? I'm just going to say it's save the hermit crabs from Petco . One time I went to Petco to adopt a hermit crab, and I'm always sad when I see the hermit crabs, because its like 10 small-medium hermits in a maybe 5 - 10 gal tank, a lot of them in painted shells, shallow sub, and low temps and low humidity I asked the employee showing me the hermit crabs if she could ask the "hermit crab care taker people employees" to spray the hermit crabs more and give them normal shells and add more substrate. She said she would ask them to spray the tank more, but unfortunately they couldn't change the substrate depth or the painted shells, because these were pretty much mandatory Petco rules, and an employee isn't allowed to change the rules. She said she agreed that the hermit crabs should have a better tank and shells and be better taken care of, so I'm glad at least one Petco employee cares about the hermit crabs
3a. How has your experience reaching out to pet stores been, if any?
See above
3b. How has your experience reaching out to misinformed influencers been, if any?
One of my friends used to have a hermit crab, but unfortunately he died after a year. She asked for advice about the hermit crab, I think overall she took fairly good care of her hermit crab, the only bad things about the hermies crabitat was that she had shallow substrate for the hermit crab so she could see him without him disappearing underground, which I guess makes sense if you haven't done research about the sub depth, because if you don't know about why hermit crabs need deep substrate then you would probably just be like "Hmm... yes I see.. Imma just make shallow sand so I can see my hermit crab better! Great idea! Thanks for the inspiration Petco!". The other thing was that she only had one hermit crab, and hermit crabs are usually social creatures. I've heard of people having just one hermit crab for years, and the hermie does just fine though. (I still like to have multiple hermit crabs though.)
3c. How has your experience reaching out to misinformed irl relations been, if any?
N/A

1. When I first got my crabs I had some issues with conflicting information. Particularly about weather to do the PPS method of settling your crabs in or not. A, by many accounts reliable online source, was a big advocate of the method and I came to regret that decision as one of my crabs pretended to be dead for almost a week then resurrect himself. And I still am not sure of the cause on weather it was pps, the fact that they were out of ideal conditions for too long or some other outside cause. Since I purposefully kept then out of ideal conditions with that method I don't know if it was something that could have been avoided or not.
2. Again more misinformation. I was under the impression that they only molted once a year because if you Google, "how often do hermit crabs molt?" That's the answer you get. So when my crabs went to molt their second time I was very concerned until I was told the truth about molting on this site. Also the fact that crabs can appear dead when their not was scary. I'm so happy I found this site before I could have really killed my sick crab believing he was already dead. Oh, and the fact that some hydrometers need to be calibrated was a suprise. My himidity was at least 10% lower then it should have been for way too long.
A. Going to pet store and not being able to trust the products advertised for hermit crabs is annoying. Really I do most of my crab shopping in the reptile and bird sections.
B. I've been lucky enough to find this site pretty quickly and the advice has been reliable so far.
C. I got my crabs as an impulse buy whilst on vacation in a tourist shop. And I remember the young kid in charge of selling the crabs being very sympathetic to the crabs and seemed to genuinely want them to go to good homes. He was clearly there only working for the summer and probably had no real knowledge about what he was selling. In fact the crabs probably became his responsibly because he was brave enough to handel them, the other workers did not. I got home and discovered that both the food and sponge were both bad for the crabs, even though they were included with the crabs by a young man who seemed to genuinely like them. Right off the bat I was misinformed about what they eat and drink by the person who sold them to me, though I doubt he knew this.
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I have yet to rehome a crab or take one in from anywhere besides a shop.

General Questions

1. What was the biggest hurdle to bringing your husbandry to proper care when you first got crabs?
Like Sam said, the misinformation/conflicting information. It's very overwhelming for a new crabber!

2. What struggles have come and gone since then?
Honestly, finding the right shells. When I originally bought stuff for my crabs, I didn't anticipate having Kendall (who is the biggest). And for a while, most shops were sold out of 1.5-2" shells.

3. Have you attempted outreach and struggled? How so?
I'm the only person I know with crabs, so the only 'outreach' I do is on here.


Rehoming related
(This is all from the perspective of when I got Kendall. I do know some of the backstory.)

1. How long did it take you/has it been taking you to get your crabs to their next home?
It all happened very quickly. We have a neighborhood Facebook group for buying and selling things. She was listed as a 'free hermit crab'. The listing was only up for a couple minutes before Facebook took it down (no buying and selling of animals), but my mom saw it in that time frame and messaged the person. We went to their house and got her within 10 minutes!

3. Was your decision to rehome mainly time based or financial based? (feel free to give as much context as you would like)
Actually, neither. A relative of her original owners had brought Kendall back (in a kritter keeper) from a beach shop as a gift for one of the kids. The kids thought she was creepy and the mom kinda did too. They also didn't like that she was nocturnal and kept waking them up at night.

Sorry for the late reply but thank you so much to everyone!!