In: Advocacy, General

Purchasing a hermit crab from a pet store is not a rescue. ANY purchase of wild caught hermit crabs feed the pet trade cycle and sentences more hermit crabs to the same terrible fate. Why does a store that treats hermit crabs like this deserve your business? Your money is the one thing they do care about, so take it elsewhere. By ignoring the fact that a pet store neglects the animals they sell and giving them your hard earned dollars, you are feeding the cycle. Corporate offices at major chains ignore the demands for better care because it would affect their bottom line. SoRead More →

Glycyphagus-spp-mite

In: Crabitat, FAQ

Written by Anne Grady Food mites, more properly called grain mites are something that can be found in any tank at any time. The first thing to understand is that they did not come from the crabs, having hermit crabs does not cause you to have food mites. Food mites come into your home through the everyday things you buy at the grocery store. Anything that contains grain can have food mites. Oatmeal, grits, breakfast cereal, noodles, flour and rice are a few examples. In general you won’t see them and they are harmless, but that box of corn meal or pancake mix that getsRead More →

In: Crabitat

You finally scored that awesome tank at a killer price but now how do you clean it?? If the tank is simply dirty but no actual build up on the glass, the cleaning process is pretty straight forward. A mild detergent can be used with hot water to wash away dirt and grime. Use a mild bleach solution 1:10 ratio to sanitize the tank in case of parasites or disease. Follow up with a thorough rinse with water and then white vinegar. Allow to air dry 24 hours. Dealing with stubborn build up on the glass is more challenging. Some stains may never come off.Read More →

In: Crabitat, General

A couple years ago when we created our Facebook group to go along with our website I was shocked to find so many people with flooding issues and bacterial blooms in their crabitats. The response to this was a false bottoms.  In 14 years of crab keeping I’ve never encountered this, so it’s on my mind all the time…where is all the water coming from? I think I may be on the path to the root cause – overly wet substrate at the beginning. When you take sandcastle wet sand, add wet ecoearth, add bubbler pools and heat and it’s no wonder the humidity inRead More →

In: Crabitat

We are amending our recommendation regarding moss. While moss is safe and should be offered in your crabitat we no longer believe it is safe to MIX the moss into your substrate or to layer it under your substrate. In the video below you will see a newly set up crabitat (not the owners first crabitat, she was upgrading) with moss layered under the substrate to test a natural false bottom, as was previously done on All Things Crabby. It rapidly developed an out break of Trichoderma that went all the way through the moss to the other side of the tank in one week.Read More →

In: Caresheets

A hermit crabs shell serves two purposes: first protection of the soft abdomen and second it prevents desiccation (drying out). A hermit crab that has left the protection and life-sustaining seashell home is telling you it’s in distress. Below we expand a bit on these causes. Physical Stress Land Hermit Crabs endure a great amount of stress before reaching the pet store. The harvesting and shipping of hermit crabs is a very inhumane process and the crabs suffer because of it. They then arrive in pet stores, who in most cases, don’t know how to properly care for them. They arrived stressed out, dehydrated andRead More →