Hungry, Hungry Hippos--er, Hermit Crabs

Last night after I'd gone to bed, apparently almost all the hermit crabs were out and about, so Mike put some freeze dried crickets in the tank.

They must have had a PARTY with those things because when I woke up this morning there was hardly a whole cricket to be found, just bits of something freeze dried littering the tank. I guessed crickets from the various bits, but I had to ask to be sure. Mike was amazed, he said he'd accidentally tipped in way more than he'd meant to, and there was still hardly a whole cricket to be found. I had to do some major spot cleaning to get most of the cricket parts.

Tonight's another party in the food dish. The dry food dish has crushed mixed nuts and seeds (I remember walnuts, almonds, sesame seeds, pumpkin seeds... maybe a couple more - I spent a couple of hours watching food tv, crushing seeds and nuts with my mortar and pestle one day), dried shredded coconut, dried cranberries, dried papayas and kelp powder.

The fresh food dish is an unassembled fruit n fish salad. Chunks of coconut, sweet potato, mango, smelt, and a cube of thawed plankton with some wakame threads for "greens" (all fresh/thawed except the seaweed).

So far, they're digging the dry food for sure, but nuts and coconut are both particular favorites. I expect more activity in the fresh food dish in a little bit once it all has a chance to come to tropical temperature (I left it out for awhile, but it was still a little chilly when it went in the tank).

I also got all my freezer crab food reorganized. I have been keeping "everything" in a tupperware in the freezer, but not everything fit (the packets of cubed frozen fish food especially), and since the container was always hard to get to (it had to go on bottom due to its shape and size), I was putting off thawing food for the hermit crabs, or making excuses not to have to. And sometimes if it got put away before everything got back in it, little baggies of this and that would get scattered around the freezer.

I think the new way will work a lot better. All the frozen fish food packets are in a big ziplock on the freezer door because we need those every day for the fiddler/red claw tank, and everything else is in a big ziplock on the TOP of the people food. The smelt bag (I got TONS it will take years to go through them with the hermit crabs!) is still on bottom though... Oh well.

Awww... They've all been chasing krill around the tank for ages now. I'm wondering if Petsmart kept them fed. :(

Right now, the female fiddler crab has the biggest chunk pinned between her and the wall at the moment, and she's trying to climb up the aquarium sealant with it!

A crab of another sort...

So, today we went to the pet store. We've been looking for a waterfall for the hermit crab tank for awhile now (Mike really wants one), which would be cool. And they do carry them at PetSmart (allegedly). So every once in awhile we darken their door just to see if they have any in.

Once again, no luck. Mike found a new hermit crab hidey he really liked (one of the rounded wood hideys). Most of them that you see are hollowed out sections of half-logs, sometimes cut to fit in a corner. This one was cut at an angle though, so the top (front) was quite high and even larger hermit crabs could go in to hide. And then we went to look at the pets.

So, I was about to buy two little pps, when the tank beside them caught my eye. They had red crabs and "miniature" crabs (near as we can tell, some type of fiddler crab). They were so much fun to watch I couldn't resist buying some! We now have a 10g with 2 fiddler crabs and 2 red crabs (I may have to move them tot he 20L eventually). Now I am scrambling trying to learn to take care of them!

After some internet research, they have a shell with spirulina, purple sea veggies (chopped really small), and crushed rose petals on land and a floating cube of frozen krill in the water. So far, we know both species like krill. Mike was watching the red claw crabs chasing it all over the tank (the filter moves the water around so that the cubes float around crazily).

The hermit crabs got a not-crushed-up version of the same meal.

Yay for crabs!

We also looked through the iso tank our newest hermit crabs were in - one made the cut and moved into the main tank. Now I have to name him!

The other one in the iso was OK, but looked like his leg was positioned oddly, so I'm going to leave him in iso another few days.

So 6 crabs to name!

I haven't updated for about a week now, I think. I've been putting it off.

Monday night, we did a much needed deep clean on the tank. When we had finished cleaning out the substrate, we found the remains of our first hermit crab, Sonic, who both Mike and I were/are very attached to. His is the first death we've had that was not related to PPS. We've never had one make it more than a month with us and then die. :( As nearly as we can tell, it was a bad molt. There was very little of him left, so I don't know whether it was a cannibalism problem or whether the coconut fiber was just that effective at breaking down the corpse.

We were understandably very panicky after we finished going through substrate when we noticed there was another crab missing as well. It was one of the small white ruggies, Dougal, though we did find his exoskeleton mostly intact. So, as we were putting shells back into the tank, we were searching desperately to see if he had just molted and was jammed so far back in a shell that we couldn't really see him.

We looked in all the shells the right size with no luck. We thought for sure he'd fallen prey to some crabby cannibal in his softened state. And then Mike noticed a "spare" shell he'd just put in the tank attempting to move. A spare shell whose opening was as large as the shell Dougal had previously been in.

Sure enough. Dougal was alive.

Into iso he went, with his exo and lots of shells the right size. He still hasn't changed shells. I'm very worried about him exhausting himself trying to move around in that thing, but he has been slowly eating some of his exo. So there's hope.

Monday night we also bought two hermit crabs at PetSmart (which is new here), who we've rarely seen since. They have been eating though, so they must just be 'fraidy cats and coming up when we're sleeping. I have them in iso as well since the day we bought them was cleaning day and I didn't want to put them through the stress of meeting all the new crabs in the rubbermaid I keep them in when the tank is being cleaned. We haven't named them since we've hardly seen them, but they are both PPs.

Since then, not too much exciting has gone on, other than that we broke the air stones trying to take them out of the tubing (apparently, that's not a good idea), so we need to get some more of them if we're going to have bubbles in the water.

We found out that the crabs are big fans of the banana, coconut, and crushed mixed nuts combo, and that they like blueberries. :)