Tag: hermit crabs

  • Breeding Program Winter 2020 Update

    February 14, 2020 The babies from the 2018 spawn are now 18 months old and some are really starting to look like small adult crabs. It’s hard to believe I used to pick them up in an eyedropper. Others, from the same brood, are still quite small. The 2019 adopters and I are working together…

  • Breeding Update

    This adorable little guy is 106 days old. My last full count (January 8th) showed 204 survivors (out of 244 that exited the water in shells and walked onto land). A full count takes many hours, a complete tank change, and several days of follow-up because when they are this small some are always underground…

  • Day 67, 34, 31.

    All good overnight. I now have almost 400 megalopa in the new transition tank. Some in the kreisel had actually done the last molt to become hermits—but in the water. They look so different, it was easy to tell. They drowned without taking a shell as a result. I think it was because I had…

  • Day 59, 26, 23.

    I noticed today that a couple of the stage five zoeae aren’t orange like all the others have been, they’re an unusual blue (sort of grey-blue like an uncooked shrimp). In this picture, you can see the blue one above the two shells (center) and an orange one just to the right of the shells…

  • Day Twenty-One

    Three weeks. If nothing else, I’ve done that. Today was deep-clean day and I had a semi-emergency. Took almost five hours to complete because I realized (after completely wiping clean and drying it) that the left kreisel had sprung a leak. Freshwater was dribbling in. I must have wiped a little too vigorously at the…

  • Day Eighteen

    Day Eighteen. Finally got a really good closeup shot today of one that I think is at Stage Four. I’m placing it side-by-side with a drawing of the various stages provided for verification. (Credit for the diagrams goes to: “The Larval Development of the Tropical Land Hermit Coenobita clypeatus (Herbst) in the Laboratory,” Author: Anthony J. Provenzano…

  • Waiting to spawn

    September 10, 2018: My larval setup is now fully prepped in readiness for the hermit crabs spawning which I hope will occur either tomorrow or overnight tonight. Here are the specs: 35% salinity, verified with my handy dandy refractometer (freshly calibrated) There are 2 1/2 gallons of saltwater in each of the side-by-side kreisels. I…