Crabs!

[lisamoe]

Yesterday the boys and I went to the pet store and bought the hermit crabs a bigger water dish, some mineral salts and some new food. Then we came home and emptied out and cleaned their sand, added a layer of jungle bed to the cage when we put the sand back in, and got them new branches to climb on. I also moved their cage to where we could see it better so the boys would take more of an interest. I feel better about that. We'd been kind of neglecting our crabby friends.

Comments

[dinernighthawk.livejournal.com]

I've always wanted either a hermit crab or another salamander, but I've always lived with fuzzy-animal people. Are they as fun as they look?

[lisamoe.livejournal.com]

The crabs are really cute and they're fun while they're out doing stuff and they'll get used to being handled really easily. But they dig underground for weeks at a time to molt, so you just come in and have crabs missing and it's disconcerting til they come back up. They aren't much trouble though. They eat tiny amounts of powdered or pellet food, so are dirt cheap to feed. They need a dish of water all the time too. But if they go dry or unfed for a day, they're hardy and won't die or anything, probably because they're set up to hibernate and molt like they do, so they're very forgiving pets if you aren't wanting something high maintenace.

I've never had a salamander. I have a green anole and it's a fair amount of trouble because it needs live food daily. I used to have a leopard gecko which was more social than this anole but it was also kind of high maintenance. My betta fish is pretty trouble free though, aside from changing the water once a week and it's cute how he comes up to get my attention and flips around when he wants to be fed.