Besides Fish...

FreshyFresh said:
So true! They all act differently. Some you'll see during the day, others you'll never see. Some are shy, some are not. Most don't realize they spend a lot of their life way up in trees and the rest of the time buried deep in the sand for months at a time.

When I was a kid, all pet stores stocked them and I remember my parents allowing me to keep them and unfortunately, keep them horribly I did. :(

Until I kept them this last time, I had no idea they needed a salt water pool (dish/bowl) as well as a fresh water pool and they have to be deep enough for them to fully submerge. I also did not know they need to be kept in sealed enclosures that are kept at ~85% humidity and ~85F. They'll eat about anything and when fed and kept well, they grow fast! This means you need to keep lots of available shells for them, which gets expensive the larger they get. I watched some of mine swap shells which is neat to see.

In the end, I just couldn't keep up with their needs and I donated all to an avid keeper who drove many miles to come get them.

Have you ever read up on what it takes to breed them in captivity? OMG what a process it is and the few that are able to do it have my total respect given what it takes.
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No I never did! I did glance through that it's difficult and nearly all are wild caught, but that's as far as I knew.

The limited resources for research I had told me only one species needed salt water, which I had one of each anyways so I provided marine salt for him too. I actually loved that they ate anything, made sure their food had calcium powdered on it too. Maybe that's changed now that both species in the hobby need saltwater. I love that things are always improving.

I couldn't buy a lot of natural climbing stuff so I'd make popsicle stick jungle gyms for them to climb. Tight sealed lid for humidity and not escaping lol

I just wish I could have given them more space. I read that the 10 gallon was fine, but learning nowadays it most definitely was not. I don't think I'd get back into them now, not due to lack of interest but due to lack of space lol

I do happen to have some old photos of the two I had. The smaller guy was way more outgoing and active, the other much more shy. Both gentle, never was pinched.
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Yep, coenobita (purple pinchers) and the much less common Ecuadorians need a marine salt water pool and a FW pool. They will eventually die w/out the marine minerals. I kept an aquarium air stone in at least one pool to keep the humidity up and a reptile mat, taped to the back of the tank to maintain the heat.

The recommended smallest size tank now is a 29gal and they don't recommend more than 2 or so crabs per 29 because they will get baseball sized. You need a light on a timer, just like you would a planted fish tank.

Once you get the setup dialed in and a nitrogen cycle establishes in the substrate, the tank just smells like fresh soil. The super keepers do lots more fiddling with the setups, as in turning over and replacing substrate, etc.. This is quite a bit of mess. You do have to make sure you never flood the bottom of the substrate. If so, you have to get that water out.
 
FreshyFresh said:
Yep, coenobita (purple pinchers) and the much less common Ecuadorians need a marine salt water pool and a FW pool. They will eventually die w/out the marine minerals. I kept an aquarium air stone in at least one pool to keep the humidity up and a reptile mat, taped to the back of the tank to maintain the heat.

The recommended smallest size tank now is a 29gal and they don't recommend more than 2 or so crabs per 29 because they will get baseball sized. You need a light on a timer, just like you would a planted fish tank.

Once you get the setup dialed in and a nitrogen cycle establishes in the substrate, the tank just smells like fresh soil. The super keepers do lots more fiddling with the setups, as in turning over and replacing substrate, etc.. This is quite a bit of mess. You do have to make sure you never flood the bottom of the substrate. If so, you have to get that water out.
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Yeah none of that was available back then, but also didn't have much access to things either.

I wonder if adding a drainage layer with a mesh barrier would work to cancel out the pooling problem? I know bioactive enclosures for animals that need humidity use those often.
 
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It's interesting you guys talking about hermit crabs. Our neighbor in Uni. housing had them when we first got married. He used to bring them outside sometimes. He was older & kinda shy so we didn't learn much about them but they seemed pretty cool.
 
fishorama said:
It's interesting you guys talking about hermit crabs. Our neighbor in Uni. housing had them when we first got married. He used to bring them outside sometimes. He was older & kinda shy so we didn't learn much about them but they seemed pretty cool.
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They are pretty cool! They make great pets, very underrated.
 
fishorama said:
Our neighbor might have been shy about them because we were not supposed to have pets of any kind. We didn't care & would not have "ratted him out".
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Yeah I'd be wary in his shoes too, you can never be too careful with people.
 
Yeah, we went there with birds & fish a few years later. We had little kids we didn't know knock on our door to see our "zoo". That was OK(-ish) until 1 of our birds nibbled a girl's sparkly earring & she swatted the bird off, yikes! No more kid visitors except the 2 close 1s we knew. Then we had to move them out when they wanted to fumigate for roaches! There were all kinds of pets in the "safe zone". Who knew? I think we were all worried about losing our cheap Uni housing or our pets...We had no trouble other than some big paranoia vibes for a while...
 
fishorama said:
Yeah, we went there with birds & fish a few years later. We had little kids we didn't know knock on our door to see our "zoo". That was OK(-ish) until 1 of our birds nibbled a girl's sparkly earring & she swatted the bird off, yikes! No more kid visitors except the 2 close 1s we knew. Then we had to move them out when they wanted to fumigate for roaches! There were all kinds of pets in the "safe zone". Who knew? I think we were all worried about losing our cheap Uni housing or our pets...We had no trouble other than some big paranoia vibes for a while...
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In Ontario here, it is illegal for a landlord to evict you for having a pet, even IF they try to tell you no pets. They legally cannot have it on the lease here or evict you for it.

However, doesn't mean they wouldn't try to evict under some other vague reason if you had pets anyways against their wishes anyways lol

Yeah gotta watch with kids and birds, they're not always gentle. And earrings, oh boy, those are free game to parrots lol
My cockatiel, she stole my dad's diamond earring once and we never found it. She didn't eat it, but it dropped and we never ever found it again. He still holds it against her any time he visits and sees her 13 years later haha.
 
My camponotus castaneus (chestnut carpenter ant) and their enclosure. The big lit up part is their outworld, where they forage for their sugar water and protein foods. It's attached to their nest, a tube style diy nest. It's still a young colony, so it is fine for time being. They'll eventually need larger, but they're slow growing ants.
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They're fairly mellow and quiet during the daytime. More of a crepescular/nocturnal species.
 
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