Written by peta2 staffer Kim Johnson.Growing up, I lived with two adopted cats who were considered members of the family. So when I started my first year of college, I felt lonely in the university dorms without an animal companion. At a mall one weekend, I came upon a store that was selling hermit crabs and decided that one of these little creatures would be the perfect companion for my dorm room! The rest is history. I took my crab home, named him Herman, and vowed to give him a great life. I followed the store’s “care instructions” and got a plastic tank for Herman, along with some gravel and some branches for him to climb on. I fed Herman every day and took him out of his tank to explore. I also bought a brightly colored spare shell in case he grew larger and needed to switch shells. But Herman never grew. In fact, he lived for only a few months.I thought I was giving Herman a happy life, but in reality, I was only supporting a cruel industry that had torn him away from his home in the wild and shipped him off to a mall to be sold for profit.

Here are seven reasons why you should never buy a hermit crab:1. Just about every land hermit crab sold in a souvenir shop or mall has been captured from his or her home in the wild, as hermit crabs rarely breed in captivity.2. Hermit crabs need lots of friends! They thrive in large colonies, where they often sleep piled up together. They enjoy climbing, foraging, and exploring, and they even collaborate in teams to find food.3. Hermit crabs can live for more than 30 years in their natural habitats on tropical seashores, but after being purchased, most do not live for more than a few months to a year.4. To their caretakers, captive hermies might seem to be acting normally, but over time, many crabs actually die slowly from suffocation because their modified gills require high humidity in order to breathe.5. Hermit crabs also are often slowly poisoned by tap water and/or the toxic paint adorning their shells. Crabs don’t care if they are orange or purple, but they pay with their lives because humans do!6.

Crabs need space in which to molt (or shed their skin) and grow. A crab’s skin doesn’t stretch and grow like ours does, so they need very deep, damp sand to burrow under in order to molt. Without proper space in which to molt, a crab’s body will stop the molting process until his or her death.7. buy aquarium 3d backgroundThe hermit crab trade hurts wild crabs, too. buy sea aquarium tickets onlineWorkers collect thousands of shells from the ocean every year in order to paint them and sell them with “pet” crabs, which deprives wild hermit crabs of homes that are in short supply and contributes to what has been called the “hermit crab housing crisis.” buy aquarium ipswich

At any given time, 30 percent of wild crabs are inhabiting shells that are too small for them, and after their growth phase in the spring, this figure can jump to nearly 60 percent.Never, ever buy a hermit crab. They are not “starter pets” or trinkets. Crabs are complex, sensitive animals who want to live in the wild, not in a cage. fish tank lights cheapEven the most well-meaning person who purchases crabs will never be able to give them the life that they deserve.things to buy for fish tankIf you or someone you know already has a hermit crab, check out this hermit crab care guide for helpful tips on keeping crabs happy. buy aquarium in usaHermit crabs need companionship, plenty of climbing room, substrate to bury themselves in for molting, humidity, warm temperatures, extra shells, fresh and salt water (dechlorinated aquarium salt only), and much, much more!

Never release a captive crab back into the wild. The cookie settings on this website are adjusted to allow all cookies so that you have the very best experience. If you continue without changing your cookie settings, we'll assume that you are happy to receive all cookies on our website. However, if you would like to, you can change your settings at any time using the Change cookie settings link in the Special menu. Aquatics to your door aim to make buying fish online an easy and enjoyable experience. We have a full range of tropical fish ready to buy online, specialising in Malawi and Tanganyikan Cichlids. In our near 40 years in the aquatic industry we have visited suppliers in 12 countries enabling us to offer you the very best tropical fish on the market. As well as a whole range of fish including sharks, loach, angelfish, tetras, plecos, fighting fish, guppies, corys and more we also have a range of tropical invertebrates. These include crabs, shrimps and lobsters. Our selection of Saltwater Marines offers you everything from Invertebrates, Corals, Live Rock, to a full range of fish.

All available to buy online and delivered to your door the very next day. Along with the range of fish we keep in stock such as firefish, grammas, clownfish, tangs, seahorses, puffers and more we also take orders for bamboo sharks, large angelfish, eels and any other marine fish you would like us to obtain. We keep in stock a large selection of both Israeli Koi and Thai Koi Carp as well as many Pond Fish such as Ghost Carp, Goldfish, Shubunkin, Sarassa and Orfe. These are available to buy online and be sent directly to you. With frequent buying trips to Israel and Thailand we are able to hand pick the highest quality Koi Carp. All Koi are quarantined in our purpose built quarantine and conditioning ponds so you can sure of receiving healthy fish. All the larger Koi are individually photographed and groups on the smaller Koi so you can see before you buy. Aquatics to your door, making fish keeping easier. for the photos providedOne relatively easy to keep and yet often overlooked pet invertebrate type is the land crab, a type of crustacean that lives mainly on the edges of the water rather than in the seas and rivers themselves.

Land crabs of certain types can be kept as pets within the home, and make for incredibly interesting and educational pets that are relatively low maintenance. Land crabs require their own tank and equipment setup and cannot be kept in an aquarium with fish, but nevertheless, providing for their needs and looking after them is fairly simple, and requires a time commitment equivalent to that of keeping an aquarium rather than that of a caged animal. If you think you might be able to offer a home to some of the smaller species of land crab, read on to learn more! The two most readily available and commonly kept land crab species in the UK are the Rainbow Land Crab and the Halloween Land Crab. Both of these species of crab are relatively hardy, do not grow too large, and live mainly on the land. However, as with all crabs, they do require access to water, and so their tank should consist of a split between a land area and water that they can use freely as well. The rainbow land crab is brightly coloured in hues of purple, blue, orange and cream, while the Halloween land crab usually has a black body and orange legs with purple markings on the claws.

Both species of land crab are brightly coloured and visually very pretty! Land crabs do not need an enormous tank to be happy, as they are territorial animals that in the wild, restrict themselves to a set area rather than roaming nomadically. Land crabs are best kept in pairs rather than colonies unless you have a particularly large tank with plenty of room for separate territories, as overcrowding can lead to fighting. In order to keep a couple of land crabs, a tank of around two feet long by a food deep and wide is fine. In order to provide the perfect environment for land crabs, your tank should contain both a beach, and an area of water. Using an appropriate aquarium or reptile sand is the easiest way to do this, building up the sand on one side of the tank to form a bank, which slopes into water that is three to four inches deep. Land crabs will create burrows within the sand bank, and using an appropriate sand that will retain its shape when wet and not collapse inwards onto these burrows is vitally important.

Over time, the water side of the bank or beach will gradually wash into the water area, and so you will need to make provision to support the bank by means of forming dams with aquarium furniture or driftwood in order to help the beach area to retain its shape. Even though the water area will be small and relatively shallow, you should still provide some means of filtration for the water in order to keep it clean and avoid it from stagnating. A small aquarium filter that can fit underneath the water level is ideal. Crabs will quite happily eat fish, and so aquarium fish should not be kept in the water part of a crab tank! The sand side of your crab’s tank should be kept moist at all times, and this will usually happen naturally due to contact with the water. If the sand is dry throughout it as well as on the top layer, the environment of the tank may be too dry, or the water area not large enough comparatively to the land area. Both rainbow land crabs and Halloween land crabs are freshwater dwellers, and so do not require salt water.

However, normal tap water should be de-chlorinated and treated in the same way that water for pet fish would be, prior to addition to the tank. Rainbow crabs and Halloween crabs hail from hotter climates than the average UK house temperature, and so you will need to integrate a heat mat and thermometer into the tank in order to keep the temperature warm enough and constant. Place this under the water area of the tank, so that the heat will be drawn into the land area through the sand. Your thermostat should be set to around 22 degrees Celsius, as any hotter than this may prove too hot for your crabs. Crabs are omnivorous, and will eat more or less anything! Crabs are natural scavengers, and in the wild, consume a wide range of foodstuffs including plant matter, fish and anything else that they can find! Hermit crabs are also popular pets and a complete food designed for hermit crabs is also appropriate to feed to land crabs. You can also feed fish food, raw fish, small cubes of frozen and defrosted whole food such as you can buy for aquarium fish, and various vegetables such as potato or apple.