Hermit Crabs

Hermit Crabs!

We have two; "Lacey" and "Jackie Chan". They were Jackson's class pets, and we got to keep them at the end of the school year. June 25th, the week Jackson was at camp for the first time, Lacey buried herself in the sand. Well, their setup is a 10 gallon aquarium with playsand now, we did have it mulch with a shallow sandbox for them to play in. They like the all-sand setup much better than the mulch, we've learned. Anyhow, Lacey buried herself. It as nothing new to see one bury its self, Jackie Chan done it a lot in the mulch.

Naturally, I assume that Lacey is molting, yay! They're bigger hermit crabs, not like the little things you see at PetSmart. They fill up about 3/4 of your palm when out of the shell. We have three bigger shells in the tank with them that they've played with, sat on, etc ..

So Lacey has been buried in the sand for almost a month. I was starting to worry if she had died! But what we had read on molting, if we went digging to find out we could actually possibly kill her due to our impatience. I posted on the Other Pets board at iVillage and got a good link for resources, and learned that bigger crabs can take as long as two months to molt. WHEW. It hasn't been quite a month yet, so we're out of the dark as far as worrying if Lacey was dead or not.

I did read additional signs as to whether one is about to molt, and thought to myself, some of those sound like Jackie Chan, how weird! I thought JC was grieving and missing Lacey because they play together a lot and it was missing its friend. But then I remembered when we urged it out of its shell, how it had a gel sack under its hind leg, and Jackson and I thought "Hmmmm...".
So get this- Sunday morning, we see this 'crater' in the sand where Lacey had buried its self, and we see Lacey's shell! It's alive! Woo-Hoo!

So we're leaving it alone, and we're leaving JC alone in case its about to molt. TODAY- what do we find? JC has either come out of its shell completely, or shedded its entire exoskeleton and is in its shell rebuilding it's new exoskeleton. It's so wild!

Meanwhile, Lacey is shedding its exoskeleton, little by little. We've found two limbs above the sand where its buried its self, including the small pincher claw. Well, I say buried, the sand could have just fallen back on top of her, too. We were looking yesterday and you could see it through the glass moving it's antennae and two limbs, but by bedtime the sand had fallen enough into the hole where we couldn't see anymore.

So now we're constantly checking the tank everytime we walk by it, how neat is this!?