Glamour Shots!

Okay, juuuust kidding on the title, there! We are a little bit obsessed with our hermit crabs, though. I could not help myself, when they were out for tank renovation, I just HAD to get pictures of them! Didn't I? hehe 

Tank

This is Tank. He was our first living crab, and the largest for a long while. He is bashful, but will emerge if you stay still long enough. He loves shell shopping, and flipped shells nearly fourteen times that we saw in three days. Tank is confirmed male. He is the most purple of the crabs, though you can see some lovely red highlights in his legs. He has two distinguishing features. First, the eye on our right (his left) is a little slimmer than his other eye.



Tank's second distinguishing feature is that he has a chipped leg. You can see it  does not come to a point and has no nail. I have been fascinated to discover that the three crabs with leg damage haven't followed the same process during molting. The two crabs with a leg chipped off at the tip did not shed those legs during molt to grow new ones. Only the crab with an entire leg missing bothered to regenerate a new limb. 



I find this fascinating because Tink - who had a slightly broken claw (the very tip of the pincer that you might call his 'thumb') - shed the entire thing in order to grow a completely restored claw. 

Tink

Like Tank, you have met Tink before, although his large claw is new since you last saw him. He molted the quickest, and lived a lonely life while everyone else was down below. Tink is what we lovingly refer to as a weenie & will literally go running if you happen to come too close. lol He is one of only two guys in the tank that have never flipped into a new shell, though he has tried incorrectly several times, and failed. He is a confirmed male.

Squeak

Squeak came to us next after Tink. We have not taken a decent photo of him before now. He is the first crab we rescued from a painted shell. There was a time when he seemed very small to us, but he has grown into the top three or four crabs size-wise overall, and is living in one of the five largest shells. We're learning that crabs can be greedy when it comes to finding a roomy home! Before his molt, he looked like a little bit of nothing tucked way back in this shell. Now you can see that, while he is still pretty small, he does alright. :) We do not know yet if Squeak is a male or female. Squeak has shown himself to be mildly aggressive, and seems to greatly dislike our poor little weenie, Tink. We have no idea why.

Button

After Squeak came three little crabs all at once. We named the largest of these little crabs Button. He is still diminutive compared to our first crabs, but he seems to have a good personality. You can see that he is farther through his molt process than most of the others. His nails are sharp and have grown back in, and his exoskeleton is hardening nicely, showing off his beautiful coloring. 

While we were out purchasing Button and his friends, Squeak flipped out of his ugly orange shell and buried himself. Button flipped into the orange shell so quickly we couldn't stop it. (We were still purchasing a variety of sizes from Ebay, so unfortunately it was the only shell his size.) When he came back up almost two months later, he saw the other shells and dropped right out of the orange one - which we promptly removed. His sex is unconfirmed.

M&M

Along with Button came two small crabs we called M&M's because have shiny, brightly colored little claws. They were impossible to tell apart. One of them flipped out of his turbo into Button's old shell right away. 

We allowed the M&M who flipped to keep his name. This is his first photo. We do not know yet if he is a male or a female. His nails have not grown back in yet, but they will. 

M&M

This is what M&M looks like when he is out of his shell. You can see how pale they become during the molting process, although the colors are still deeper on the very tip of his claw and legs. 

Dead Guy

The day we changed out the tank we discovered that one of our littlest guys was still deep in molt. He is deathly still, very weak and vulnerable, and should not be moved at all. We feel SO guilty! Once he was out, there was nothing to do but hurry. We have affectionately renamed him Dead Guy. :) Don't worry! We gave him the whiff test. He is NOT dead, even after having been moved. ;) His sex is unknown. 

Emsi

Next came Emsi (pronounced em'zee), a gift from my sister and her family. He is a little bit pale because he's been in molt, and he has even grown a bit. You can see that he has some really good color on his legs. Once he is through the entire process and his new exoskeleton is hardened, you will see his colors more vividly. We do not know yet if Emsi is male or female. 

Emsi is a wonder of biology. He was missing a leg, but as you can see clearly in this picture, it regenerated while he was molting! Emsi is in the top four as far as size goes. You can see he inhabits one of the larger turbos in the tank. 

Sweet Pea

I am going to pause here to pay respect to Sweet Pea. She was the second crab gifted to us by my sister and her family, and she was so tiny!

Poor little dear, Sweet Pea did not seem to know how to tunnel down into the substrate. She went straight into molt on the surface of the tank. Tink, usually a scaredy-crab, became aggressor. He did not break or try to eat her, but climbed on top of her, rolling her over repeatedly, smelling her frantically with his feelers. We isolated her, but were not in time. She passed away and is buried in our backyard. She was a confirmed female. 

Brick

Brick

Now we have arrived at our last and largest crab, Brick. You may remember him from this post, where he is showing off his size and beauty. ;) Brick is most easily distinguished by his size, and his very unusual left (our right) eye. I have not been able to determine if that eye is injured, or just an abnormality. He is a deep burgundy in color, and dwarfs the smaller crabs in the tank. 

He is also the hardest to keep still. lol Throwing caution to the wind, Mr. Brick muscled his way directly toward the camera, and tried to charge off of the pillow I was taking his photo on. lol Brick is a confirmed male crab, having no gonopores or pleopods visible when he flipped shells. I'm sure by now you are wondering what in the world I'm talking about. If so, click here.

Brick climbing the reptile wood decoration

So, anyway. That was my long, long post about our crustacean babies. :) They do enjoy the new digs, and several have been happily coming out at night to eat and play. We can hear them clinking around in there from somewhere around ten or eleven all the way up through eight in the morning on most nights. :) 

They can be seen climbing on the various types of wood and cactus in the tank...

Seven of the Eight crabs are in this picture :)

...crawling into the food dish to scavenge whatever fresh food has been left for them...

...scaling the coconut coir climbing background (and often two or three of them are halfway up the tank behind it)....

...or hiding in any one of the many nooks and crannies provided for them. :)

Happy crabs. Happy me. 

The end. :)