lol. oh yeah. them too.
oh yeah, and MAN!! do they smell when they
die
Dude, that's totally because you were misled on how to care for them. Hermit crabs, depending on what species you buy, is actually one of the harder pets to take care of which is why they always end up dead. Hermit crabs breath through modified gills which means they need humidity to breath. Anything less than 70% (75-80% ideal) and their gills slowly dehydrate over days or months depending on the conditions and they slowly suffocate and die. Going naked, like you described with your crabs, is the ultimate sign of a sick crab. Crabs will NEVER willingly leave their shells unless they are switching for a new one or the only other reason would be as a precursor to death after being exposed to unfit conditions. They also need at least 6 inches of EE or playsand (calcisand smells bad when wet) so they can burrow down and destress. Stress is probably the #1 killer of crabs. They will usually spend a couple weeks to a few months burrowed down in the substrate after you bring them home from the store. As a general rule: a stressed crab is a dead crab. They also need the deep substrate to be able to burrow down and molt. Crabs need to molt to grow and they also need calcium supplements to be able to molt and regrow their exos. In addition, their ability to release the hormones necessary to molt are greatly inhibited when their bodies sense light. If a crab is forced to surface molt there's a good chance he wont make it through it. Molting is made even more difficult because they remain soft for a long period of time after they molt. The whole molting process usually takes one month but my largest crab took 5 months from start to finish. The last, and often overlooked issue with crabs, is their diet. The commercial foods out on the market are fully of preservatives. As we all know with our T's, even the slightest chemicals are deadly. Anyways, these chemicals build up in the crabs system causing molting complications later in life. Crabs should be fed fresh or freeze dried fruits, nuts, freeze dried shrimp, and any other produce items or sources of protein (freeze dried krill and shrimp are great because they provide protein and calcium... protein and calcium deficient crabs often turn cannibalistic).
. So yeah, if you fail, try try again.Specifically, commercial foods contain sulphates as preservatives which hermit crabs cannot process naturally. The chemical builds up in the system and causes illness and eventual death. I lost three myself to an unknown preservative in some of the freeze dried fruits I bought them several months back. And as for salmonella, all current studies have shown no correlation of hermit crabs being a vector for salmonella. Biologists attribute it to a germ barrier created by their exo and a few other physical structures I can't seem to recall at the moment. If you need anything I stated to be backed up you can do your own research on the forum I've been a member of for the past year:well, it's obvious you went to a lot of trouble and what not for you crabs, which is very cool... i just wanted to touch on two things here
the chemicals thing... unless you have been reading a HELL of a lot of stuff i just plain don't have access to we don't actually know all that much about tarnatula like, chemobiology. compared to more economically significant species we basically know no hard facts specifically about tarantulas and must infer from other animals. and... water is a chemical. it might seem like nitpicking but when we are dealing with animal health i think being as accurate as reasonably possible is probably the way to go. and in point of fact my bugs have seemed to be reasonably resistant to what one would assume to be *deletorious* chemicals. i used to water them with California, San Bernardino County, Rialto tap water.... which is famours for being hideous stuff. i produce get with the best of them, on a percentage of success basis
and salmonella.... how can hermies not carry salmonella? to my thinking that would basically mean they have some antibiotic property that prevents the sammy bacteria from growing. afaik, just about any animal with a damp enough cage can carry salmonella.
Bah there's no greif for me
There's no point in caring. Life comes and goes does it not? But yeah - it's Northern Ireland, if I want a *SLIGHTLY* better store I'd have to travel for over an hour and it isn't really worth going that distance just to go back and not to mention carrying such delicate things. As I stated earlier - probably safer than ordering in. Wow, I'm sorry for all the difficulty you've had, but like all things it just takes time and dedication.To mrbonzai211
All I gotta say is true that.
Like keeping aquatic shrimps. Some of them are so sensitive to whats in the water that even a tiny mistake can mean a disaster. They make caring for most fish seem like a piece of cake. I tried over and over again, this is my 6th time buying them!!! And guys, they're not too cheap, I can't even afford them from the petstore ($5 for one tiny shrimp wtf?) so I got to buy it from friends online. Basically I spent well over $140.
Even though it might seem hopeless at first and it pissed me off, each time I learned more and now have successfully kept them and find them rather easy to keep now!
Whats worse however is that the shrimps I'm keeping are considered one of the hardiest hahaha. So even with all my experiences I've only really managed to keep the hardiest one so far
You can't always expect instant success with everything you keep, many things take time, different things live in different areas and they live in different ways and require different things. I've also kept hermit crabs before and they're pretty nice (don't expect them to be any kind of dog though!). So just because they're a failure at first doesn't mean it's complete trash or anything, just means you have lots more to learn about them!
However, breeding them is difficult, so I'm not going to wonder in to that area as I'm not THAT experienced lol.
Now I got to go change all the substrates of all my centipedes, yikes...