| Basic Care Tips, Continued... |
| Now that you have your crabitat with your crabs in it, these are some things to know to keep your crabs healthy. |
| Third: Crab maintenance. |
| Once you have your crabs, a few things to keep in mind about maintaining your crabs' health are, proper feeding, providing proper water, maintaining humidity, maintaining a constant temperature, and bathing. |
| Feeding: |
| Feeding your crabs is easy, we just put some commercial hermit crab food in a small oyster shell type dish. You may also occassionally feed your crab a treat such as a raisin, or a piece of a peanut. |
| Water: |
| There is a little more to think about when giving your crabs water than with feeding. First, be sure to use a non-chlorinated water, as chlorine will hurt your crabs by blistering the modified gills which they use to breath. Second, make sure that your water container is not so deep that your small crabs will drown. Basically, put your water in a shallow container, and put some sort of climbing material in there that the smaller crabs can use to help themselves to climb out. |
| Humidity: |
| I mentioned previously that crabs breathe via a modified gill system. Well, in order for these gills to properly work, crabs need humidity. Keep the crabitat's humidity at around 50-60%. You can moniter humidity using a humidity gauge. Two ways that you can increase your crabitat's humidity level are through the use of a damp towel, or a sponge. Placing a damp towel across the top of the crabitat will put more water vapor into the air in the crabitat. Likewise, placing a large natural sponge into the water dish will give the water a greater surface area from which to evaporate, putting more humidity into the air. |
| Temperature: |
| Keeping your crabs at a temperature of between 70 and 75 degrees ferenheit is ideal for maintaining humidity and possibly digestive funciton. To do this, you can use an undertank heater, or simply keep them in a part of the house that stays at a steady 70 - 75 degrees. Do not put them in direct sunlight however as this can dehydrate them. |
| Crab Baths: |
| Yes your crabs can do well by having baths once a week! To give your crab a bath, fill a small bowl with some lukewarm, non-chlorinated water, like that you would put in your tank, and slowly lower the crab, upside down, into the water. As he stretches out of his shell, the water will rush in. Then, lift the crab out of the water and turn him right side up once more to allow the excess water to run out of his shell. Let him run around awhile to dry off. Also, make sure not to leave him in the water for too long, lest he should drown. By bathing your crabs, you help to clean their excrement from their shells, and also help to moisturize their modified gills. Bathing can also be a means of ridding your crab of small parasitic bugs. When bathing, you may notice flea eggs, or fleas coming out of your crabs shell. If this is the case, instead of lifting the crab back out of the bowl, pour the water out of the bowl so that the fleas cannot jump back onto the crab. An extra dunking or two may be necessary. |