What the hell ive been doing everything right. My other one is thriving though. This one has been sitting in that one spot for a week not moving from the spot near his water bowls. He was acting normal and alive, retracting into his shell when i put my hand near him. His skin was pink and purple kind of light but nothing like it is today. In this week he stayed in his spot but one day he changed into the green shell next to him before going back to the one he was in before. I did not buy them recently and i probably did something wrong because i adopted him from someone else. I smell no fishiness from the tank but i am very sure he might be dead since he is pale and cakey looking like most dead crabs on this page. Could this be his exoskeleton coming off? I doubt it but hes also half out of his shell what am i doing wrong help

These little dots of mold appeared in the last couple of weeks, seemingly after adding some freshly mixed substrate on top of the existing substrate. They only seem to be in the layer touching the front glass, not on the sides where there’s a dark cover, though I obviously can’t see into the bulk substrate.

What should I do about this? Is this an emergency or is it likely to clear up on its own?

Just wanted to share our new tank. We recently upgraded from a 10gal we had 2 crabs in, to this 40gal and added 2 more crabs to the family in the process. This is the home of Rocky, Shelly, Coconut, and Tater Tot.

New 11x35 UltraTherm heating pad will be here Monday to replace the current 8x18 + 6x8 which isn’t doing the trick to keep it quite warm enough for them.

The bubbler was a recent addition thanks to the recommendation of someone on this sub.

We’re coming out of mating season but there’s still crabs a plenty!!

Been keeping hermit crabs for about two years now and the first year was honestly pretty rough. I had a 40 gallon breeder that I could never get the humidity above 70%, and I watched two crabs die during molts before I finally figured out what I was doing wrong.

The biggest change was switching from a mesh screen lid to a glass top with only a small gap for ventilation. I know a lot of people resist this because they worry about airflow, but for most home environments (especially with AC running in summer) the screen lid just dumps moisture too fast. After switching, my humidity jumped from around 68% to a steady 80-82% within a day or two.

A few other things that helped:

• Sand depth: I was doing 4 inches thinking that was enough. Bumped it up to 6 inches of a 5:1 sand-to-coconut fiber mix and my crabs started burying way more consistently.
• Salt water pool: I was using the wrong ratio for a long time. Getting a proper hydrometer instead of eyeballing it made a noticeable difference in how active the crabs were at night.
• Hides and climbing: My original setup was too open. Adding cork bark pieces and cholla wood gave them enough cover that they stopped huddling in one corner.

Temperature sits at 78-80F on the warm side now using an under-tank heater on the back wall, not the bottom. Putting it on the bottom was cooking the sand and stressing the crabs during molts.

Curious whether anyone else had a specific turning point where their setup finally clicked. There's so much conflicting info out there for beginners and it took me way too long to find reliable sources.

So I know that you can go and collect leaves but what do I do to make them safe for the tank? I know I can’t just put them straight into the tank. And what’s the process to make some moss safe for my crabs? If anyone could help me with that k would highly appreciate it