Basic Care for Hermit Crabs

Series Summary

At many seaside getaways, tourist can take home an extra special souvenir. At countless tourist shops and pet stores, many individuals find themselves drawn to a small, open tank that is filled with scurrying little creatures. These animals are a favorite pet for those that don't have the time for the demanding responsibilities of a dog or cat. Hermit crabs are tiny, omnivorous animals that require little or no care. Of course, a happy pet hermit crab should have a comfortable habitat, stay at a humidity level of about 70 percent and be fed regularly. With the proper care, hermit crabs can live for a few months or as much as 20 years! In this free video series, learn how to care for hermit crabs. Find out how to build a basic habitat for hermit crabs. Also, discover ways to clean a hermit crab. Curious what to feed a hermit crab? Get some advice for picking the right food for these tiny creatures. In addition, find out if it is possible to breed or sex hermit crabs. With these simple tips, give a pet hermit crab the care and love they deserve.

Video Transcript

"The first thing we are going to go over is basic care for a hermit crab. Hermit crabs really in a short glance are relatively easy to take care of. Now there are lots of different species of hermit crab and the species that we are going to be talking about today and that we have today is the Caribbean hermit crab, also known as the purple pincher hermit crab because their pincers are as you can see purple there. These guys are probably the most common hermit crab in the pet trade so chances are if you are buying one that's what you are buying. These guys are a land crab, they do not dwell on beaches in sand or in the water really except for when they go to breed. Which is something that a lot of people don't understand. With these hermit crabs they are called, like I said land crabs sometimes also sometimes called tree crabs. They actually spend a lot of their time on the outside of the shore in the first line of trees, where there's lots of leaf litter, lots of dirt and things like that. So that's what we are going to be looking for in creating our terrarium today.The first thing we have to do is we have our little cage here, and general rule of thumb is one gallon of enclosure per hermit crab. So say if you had a ten gallon tank you would put, you could put ten hermit crabs in there. This guy we are setting, we'll be setting this up to house two hermit crabs today. I like giving lots, my animals lots of room to move around in. So we have our little container and for bedding we are going to be using coconut, shredded coconut husks also sometimes called coco core. And this is a very fibrous dirt like substance as you can see inside there. Ok. And basically what we are going to do is we are going to put that in there and we are going to fill it up actually pretty high. About a third of the way up. And why am I doing this. Well hermit crabs molt when they grow ok. So as they grow they have to shed their exo skeleton and in order to do this they have to burrow down into the substrate where it's nice and moist and humid to allow them to molt properly. So we want to give them lots of burrowing spaces, deep as possible. So once we have a nice, a nice substrate in there, it's got a nice depth to it then we are going to put a water bowl in there for them ok. This guy is probably if I had a little hermit crab, I would be a little hesitant to use this guy because it's kind of deep. But we don't necessarily have to fill it all the way either but it's got a nice stepping stone to get out of it, so I'm ok with using it, I feel pretty safe. Next thing we have is some cocoa bark, cocoa bark I'm sorry, I mean cork bark. A cork bark is a great, great accessory for your hermit crab cage because it's something they can easily climb on and as I said these are tree crabs, they like to climb. So we are going to put that in there and we can arrange that in some way that's interesting to us or whatever, give them something nice to climb on.We can go, I'm going to put it just like that so it overlaps the water bowl a little bit. Cause I kind of like that look. And then lastly, you need a food bowl. Just a little bowl that you can put in there that will keep their food in one area so that it's not getting mixed in with the bedding and it's you know easy to find. And after we've done that we take our crabs,we've got two here and like I said these are the Caribbean hermit crabs or pincher crabs. And those guys to the mix, we'll add some water in here to give them water and then we'll go through and mist the whole thing down nice and good. Hermit crabs like it to be nice and humid, you want to be at least at seventy percent humidity in here that's because they actually while they are land dwelling creatures actually breath with modified gills so those gills have to be kept nice and moist in order to breath properly otherwise they'll basically suffocate so mist them daily, keep it nice and humid in here, keep the water bowl full, change it daily,change their food daily that way you don't get any bacteria growth or mites or anything like that. And that's pretty much all there is to it. You are going to want to keep them in above seventy two degrees in temperature but no more then eighty degrees in temperature. Seventy five is your optimum. So that's pretty easy to do in most homes. They are easy to care for and they are fun."