Crab Life In Crabitat

These photos were shot at midnight when I spotted these 2 hermies nibbling on the dandelion leaves. They each have a large piece of share & munching away happily, ignoring my presence and they just went on their usual business, eating, playing, communicating with each others, while I had my own business to do as well, that was taking picure and enjoying every moments they gave. If you were to give up some sleep to watch them during midnight, you would find that the crabitat is bustling with activities. Because of their nocturnal nature, watching a hermit at daytime can be a bore thing to do, either they are dozing off or staying at a location not moving. As for the dandelion leaves have been my hermies favourtie food since the day I offered to them, I observed that there was a lot of crabs poo around the next day, because they had eaten a lot of this favourite food. Besides that I've other foods in the dishes as well which they did not seem to eat as much, I guess maybe they were bored of those food already, and eventually the crazed on dandelion would fade off also if given too frequently.

This happy hermit was exercising on the decor tree when he had taken his fare share of dandelion night snack. He is the smaller crab among my 8 crabbies, and recently has changed to this babylon shell which looked a bit oversize for him to wear.Anyway he has no problem to manoeuvre through any difficult obstacles with this new "home", the good thing of babylon shell is light in weight, and the color is visually pleasing as well
This is the same hermit on the first pic, he came upon face to face and chatted with his buddy, as if telling him that he had a good meal and wanted to share this.

Somtimes this kind of behaviour can be quite interesting to watch, many times they would wag their antenanes, and a little bit of harmless sparring would go on. This behaviour will be seen frequently when new crabs are being added to the set up. It is a pecking order in the crabbies colony and eventually a stronger crab will emerge as dominance, then on they would settle down for a peaceful crab life in the crabitat

This is one of my favourite hermits,
when he was playing on the decor tree, i seized the chance and took this shot. Sometimes he would nibble on the plastic leaves as if it were edible, anyway the plastic leaves are too tough for him to tear apart. I figured that crabbies may need some leaves in their diet, and recently I've collected some dandelion leaves for them to eat. To my surprised my crabbies devoured the leaves very quickly, no trails of left over was found the next day. Prior to that I've given my crabbies bamboo leaves also, they had only ate a little bit. May be the leaves were just too tought for them to chew on.

My Herimes Home

This crabitat has been set up for more than 3 months, and I've started off with 3 crabbies. Gradually as i developed more interest in this hobby I bought 6 more hermies, with a total of 8 crabbies in this small crabitat I have to stop buying any. All my hermies are rugosus, I'm looking forward to buy some other species and consider to upgrade to bigger tank if I were to introduce any new hermies. Hermies is an interesting creatures to watch, they loved climbing, exploring and digging. I've tried to simulate a crabitat as close to their natural environment as possile, so as to make them feel at home and comfortable. I've used a number of artificial plants in my crabitat as decor, it has been a good place for the hermies to climb, play and sleep. Further more setting up the decor plants was an easy task and it took little effort to maintain also. My recent addition was an hammock which i DIY out of a mesh with suction cup to hold it onto place. I've always try to look into area where i can imroved further to make the crabbies and me happier.