New to This!

[katrinar1]

Well. I got my PP Mr. Krabs at Rehoboth Beach. I did some research and he is now in a 10 gallon with sand. A food shell and water shell with a sponge. And the tank is 74 deg. and 70% humidity.
I decided after I kept reading that hermit crabs were social to buy him a friend....well I did so today and I have him in an iso. tank. which is 5 gal. I havent named him yet. But i realized that my new hermie is much smaller than Mr. Krabs. Mr. Krabs is about the size of a golf ball, while my new hermie is much smaller than him. Will there be problems with Mr. Krabs trying to bully the other? I wanted to get a smaller one since I heard shell fights are much more common when they are similar in size....

[emmac350]

Welcome to HCP, and to crabbing! These little guys have a lot of needs, but once they're met, they are such fun pets! Here's a little advice - from one crabber (who initially started with crabs in a small Rubbermaid container) to another!

First of all, you need to get a dechlorinator for your water and bowls for your crabs to dip themselves in completely so they can flush out their shell water. They also need both fresh water and ocean water (you can find ocean water mixes in the aquarium section - any salts marketed for crabs are rubbish and can kill your crabs).

What all are you feeding them? They need fresh and dried foods, not pellets. Ironically enough, the preservatives in most crab pellets/flakes/powders will also kill crabs. There's a lot of information about crab nutrition at Epicurean Hermit, Hermit Crab Cuisine, and you can even buy quality crab foods online at The Addiction Store!

There's a lot of great info on this site in the Crab Care section (it's linked right above the link you clicked to get into this forum) - Wai and the other mods are really focused on getting all the newest information out there for crabbers to find. So please do check it all out - there's a lot of really surprising stuff!

Shell fights are more common with similarly-sized crabs, but if you offer a wide variety of shells similar to the type they should want (turbos, Murexes, and other shells with O shaped openings generally for PPs), and have a lot of shells in there, you shouldn't have much of a problem with shell fights. And usually, other than shell fights, you shouldn't have problems with fighting between different-sized crabs. You may notice that the bigger one is dominant (doesn't allow smaller ones to eat the same food at the same time as him, etc.), but I don't think I've ever heard of a large crab attacking a smaller one.

Congratulations on your new crabs, and enjoy them - they're exciting little animals!