a few days ago….we noticed something…one of our “snails” looked different, in fact it looked suspiciously like the empty shell that had been on the bottom of the tank. then we noticed…that’s no snail! that’s a hermit crab!!! we finally had one change homes!!!!
we got super excited, though a little sad we could not find the old shell but more so that we missed the great move.
yesterday we traveled to the fish store on the north side of town that has quality fish and clean tanks for some empty shells so out other crabs could move if they needed. we let the shells spend the night in the small tank, then this morning into the drink they went with the fishies. the crabs came a running. first was a crab that appears to be in his original home he came to us with. he investigated a shell, but ultimately decided to move on.
then, down the rock face comes the crab that moved. the crab approached the shell, stretched to take a quick peek inside and retracted.
ok…but then the crab grabbed the empty shell, lined up opening to opening, reached inside and snatched a bit of detrius…rolled with the shell and in a quick moment scooted his body from one shell to another. it then righted itself and began to clean house before taking back to the rocks.
chris and i are very excited to see a crab move. we hope to see the more of them move in the future. it is really just too cool!
*any mispelling of crab that looks like crap is not intentional and is not reflective of the views of the author.
Oh cool!
And you weren’t taking pictures?!? Uft.
You’ll have to withold larger shells for when you have company, so that all your crabs will have to move when they have an audience :-}
we wish. we’ve tried taking pictures on the tank like that before…but they never turn out as well as we might like. le sigh. some day we will get that super duper camera
but we need to try with what we have. it is really neat to watch.
we recently found out we have two limpets that arrived via live rock. we thought they were slugs…but they aren’t. think same gastropod body as a snail or slug with a small, flat shell layed on top of the body.
This is just too cool! Though i wish for a little mini movie as well, it is unlikely that you will catch the next crab trying out a new shell.
(enjoyed the disclaimer)