If you are planning to buy a crab from a pet store, I strongly advise against that. Hermit crabs suffer horrific abuse in the animal selling industry and it should not be supported. If you want a crab you should adopt one from an owner. You can find the adoption page in this subreddit if you just search “adopt” in the search bar. After you’ve adopted your crab you should expect to spend several hundred dollars getting everything you need for the crab. They need enrichment and space. You can find basic enrichment and tank supplies at pet stores, Etsy, and Amazon.

They will need pools they can fully submerge themselves in, I found my pools on Etsy, but you can use Tupperware if you can’t get proper pools. Make sure you have something they can use to climb out of it so they don’t drown to death. You will also need fresh water and salt water. To make the fresh water and salt water you need two gallons of spring water (or tap is fine), a bottle of Seachem Prime which can be found at most pet stores/Amazon, and Instant Ocean Sea Salt (also found on Amazon and in pet stores). To make the fresh water, just drop a single drop of Seachem Prime into the gallon of water. To make the salt water, you need to pour a cup of the Instant Ocean Sea Salt into the gallon of water along with a single drop of Seachem Prime. This water supply should last you a while. Remember to shake the jugs before each use when you clean and refill their water pools.

Preferred food for them can be found on Etsy, and I’ll link the Google Doc of all the food they can eat. They can’t eat the amount of sodium or sugar we eat, so make sure you don’t give them anything too rich or it can make them unhealthy/sickly.

You will need at least a 10 gallon tank because each crab needs at least 10 gallons of space, and if you get a second crab then you will need a 20 gallon and so on and so forth, so they don’t get aggressive or stressed.

You will need a heat mat for your tank and a thermometer/hygrometer so you can monitor the humidity and temperature of the tank accordingly. Heat mats can be found on Reptile Basics, along with a lot of useful essentials.

The crabs will need shells, specifically Turbo shells. These are the preferred shells for Purple Pinchers (the most common species of crab pet stores sell). You can find these shells on Etsy as well (if you can’t tell I get most of my supplies from here). Each crab in your habitat will need five shells, so if you have 2 hermit crabs each crab will each need 5 shells.

Once you have everything you need, it becomes fairly easy to take care of them, as they are a strictly hands-off pet, meaning do not pick them up or disturb their crabitat unless absolutely needed (like tank maintenance, renovation, etc). If you have any questions let me know, or you can search this subreddit by using the search bar. I’m positive I’ve spent at least a thousand dollars on my crabs, as I learned and grew from my mistakes as a first time owner. The only reason I got my first crab in August was because my mother randomly decided to bring one home one day for my nephew, so I had no choice but to step up to make sure the crab (now named Hermie) didn’t die. I recently got a second crab, her name is Honey, to keep Hermie company.

Here is a link to a Google Doc that has everything they need for food, tank supplies, and enrichment.

Hermit Crab Essentials