Vanessa's Crabitat

08/07/2026

07/06/2026

Goliath the land hermit crab eating Popping Prawn 🦐 food mix from . It features popcorn, coconut oil, prawn, prawn exoskeleton, sesame seeds, mango, coconut sugar, flaxseed, carrot, corn and almonds. Must be tasty 😋 for them as David was trying to push in for his turn!

07/06/2026

Land hermit crab eating a grape. I love watching them eat. The way they pass the food from the claws to the maxillipeds (feeding hands) and then into the mouth. So cute

05/06/2026

I received my order from Snappy Treats and the blue fish disappeared in minutes. I’ve been running low on foods for my and I loved the food mixes available: o Ahoy There Sea Lovers o Popping Prawn o Silly Squid Swampy Mix o Blue Fish and a free mini bag of bugs and Pixie Mix! I’m most excited about the Ahoy There Sea Lovers which I’m sure my hermit friends will love! Ingredients include: - Octopus
- Salmon +Salmon Skin
- Sardines
- Pink Snapper + Pink Snapper skin
- Blue Swimmer Crab
- Mysis Shrimp
- Chickpeas
- Nori
- WA Rock Lobster + Exoskeleton
- Whitebait
- Blue Groper
- Bladderwrack Powder

I can’t wait to see my hermit crabs feast on such delicacies!

08/03/2026

I love these ceramic food dishes for my land hermit crabs. Only $18.15 for three. A bargain!

https://amzn.to/47r3Omj

04/03/2026

Cathy’s Creations AU’s 6 pack Essential Diet for land Hermit Crabs - calcium mix, energy mix, exoskeleton mix, immunity colour mix, omega fatty mix and protein lipid mix. Free gift of spoon, dish and stickers

18/02/2026

A poem about my first encounter with a hermit crab

The Young’n
by H.St.V.Beechey

I babysit in the soft, warm sand.
She runs about on sturdy legs.
Perhaps she is sitting me—I do not run much any more.
She calls to me. “Great-grand-papa!”
Each consonant crisp as a race-caller.
“Great-grand-papa. Come quick! See? What is it?”
Creaking, I answer her urgency, to where she squats
Her attention pointing out the tiny creature.
Once, before I was great—before I was grand
I would have answered her. A lesson. A lecture
On the hermit crab.
But now I am wiser. “What do you see?”
“He is carrying his house.”
“And then? Tell me!”
“He is little, and he is frightened.”
“But?”
“But he is brave. He has a bitey hand, and he clicks it.
“His eyes are little sparks.
“He is a baby monster but I am not afraid!
What is he?”
“Look long and remember little one,” I say.
“THAT is what he is!”

27/09/2025

Meet the author of Crabnapped: A Land Hermit Crab Story!
Swing by their stall to grab a signed copy — paperback or hardcover — and get stuck into the fun with a crab-themed colouring competition. Winner scores a copy of the book!

Join Vanessa Pike-Russell at Logan BookFest

📣 Book your FREE tickets now - https://www.facebook.com/share/1GJY4Ah4pY/

03/09/2025

For you, a hermit crab’s lifespan is measured in months. Your kid picks one out at a beach souvenir shop. Its shell is painted to resemble SpongeBob’s freckled face. Dutifully, you buy accessories. To the shoebox-sized tank, you add some sand, a plastic palm tree, a little dish of water with a sponge, and a sprinkling of food pellets. The crab proves an unsatisfying pet. It barely moves. It curls into its shell when you approach. One day, there is a smell.

Hermit crabs were meant for so much more. They are social creatures, who can live for decades in the wild—the hermit crabs for sale on the boardwalk were all plucked from beaches. A dedicated group of crab activists rescues crabs that are abandoned at the end of summer, spending thousands of dollars on spacious "crabitats" filled with enrichment activities like climbing walls and swings, as well as specialty food. One woman is even trying (and succeeding!) at breeding hermit crabs, with the hope that someday, we'll regard the humble crab as a pet akin to a dog, or even an exotic bird: a pet with a rich life, that takes time, resources, and dedication to care for.

Read more about America’s most misunderstood pet—and the humans are fighting to change their fate: https://slate.trib.al/D1Njz0H

16/08/2025

It’s well known that Hermit Crabs have to swap shells when they outgrow their old ones.

In certain circumstances - a chain of crabs will gather together, line up in size order, and then all at once swap shells as the larger in the line becomes vacant.

It is thought that this process is controlled through pheromones, which are chemical signals that communicate with members of the same species. Often excreted through urine, these pheromones tell nearby crabs that there might be a new shell on offer.

If you haven’t seen this incredible phenomenon, please do look it up, it’s banging - however this amazing collective behaviour isn't the norm. In a pre-plastic world hermit crabs would quite happily pootle around until they found suitable habitation. This is a long-winded job for the crabs and chemical signals remain incredibly important to the process, with often grim consequences.

Plastic buckets and bottles, washed up on beaches are potential death traps for hermit crabs.

A crab in search of a new shell might quite reasonably wander into a plastic container, but sadly, on finding it inappropriate would be unable to get a grip on its smooth sides and become trapped. Soon dying of dehydration, the deceased crab’s body releases another chemical beacon, telling hermit crabs that their shell is now vacant (on account of them being dead).

These unsuspecting hermit crabs, expecting a shell, and maybe a meal, now also topple into the plastic container and are themselves stuck.

On goes the cycle.

In the Journal of Hazardous Materials, Dr Alex Bond found that across two immensely remote islands, Cocos and Henderson, over 570,000 hermit crabs died unnecessarily due to plastic waste.

The pain of using less plastic doesn’t seem so bad now right?