The most up to date info on crab care is found on a facebook group called "Hermit Crab Owners" they keep discovering new things to improve the captive lives of crabs and the information has changed a lot even in just the past year. For example some of the things that were discovered recently
-UVB lights were recently deemed essential for the crab's tank
-Discovered crabs enjoy walking on hamster wheels (it has to be a specific model so that the crabs don't get their legs caught in little holes)
-Information was documented on crab limb deformities where they grow like, a leg claw
-Leaf litter (dead leaves from crab safe trees) were deemed an essential part of the hermit crab diet
-We found out crabs have complex eyes and can see more colors than we can (discovered from the brain of an ancient crab fossil which was incredibly similar to today's purple pincher hermit crabs)
In the past the Hermit Crab Association was ths go to source for all things crab but they seem to be stuck in the older ways afraid to try new things, Hermit Crab Owners has the best information out there right now
Edit: I'll ask on the group for like photos and eye witness testaments of hermit crab collection, shipping and distribution they probably have a lot documented, they have a lot of documented "pet store horror" photos, shit like moldy dead crabs, rainbow gravel and crabs clinging to the sides of wire cages. I'll pm you the stuff I find
Thanks for that, I'm particularly interested in the conditions you mentioned for transportation and where they come from. It makes me very sad that people act as if Hermit Crabs can't feel suffering or enjoyment.
I used to work in a nature education centre a few years back. It had a ton of reptiles including a sizeable goanna, as well as small mammals like rats and mice (bred as feeders), dunnarts and hopping mice (native Australian rodents), sugar gliders and even a little bilby (an endagered Australian marsupial). It also had fish, axolotls and some insects like stick insects and native spiders.
The conditions in this place were
deplorable. All of the cages/tanks were far too small. The ones up front where the classes of kids came were in much better condition than the ones out back where only employees went, but were still pretty bad. The hopping mice were really overcrowded, the fish and axolotl tanks were always covered in algae and the insect cages were tiny. The bilby was supposedly the big draw since they're rare to see in captivity but it never
once left its little house the entire time I worked there. It was kind of a running joke that we weren't even sure there really was a bilby there at all.
That was, as I mentioned, up the front in the public area and it was bad enough. It was the employees only section that really turned my stomach, though.
The rodent cages were all
massively overcrowded. The animals didn't even have 3 square inches to themselves. They were all constantly mating and inbreeding and it was terrible. The dunnarts were kept in the 'hot room' (a climate controlled room that was always at desert-like temperatures - we also had a cold room) and their diet consisted of literally nothing but canned dog food, which would quickly go rancid in the 100+ degree room. Dunnarts in the wild mostly live on insects and small prey like tiny lizards but they're omnivorous and clearly needed better things to eat than only the cheapest, shittiest canned dog food there was. There were also stick insects kept in the hot room, and while I worked there there was a population explosion and they all escaped when they weren't fed for a while and most of them ended up crawling into the dunnart cages, where they were promptly eaten. I had to spend two whole days rounding up stray stick insects.
The rats and mice were kept in extremely crowded, dirty cages. They constantly bred. Often the new babies would be killed so they could be fed to smaller reptiles. The rats usually got to live to adulthood before they were culled to be fed to the snakes. Rats are my favourite animals and I accept that it's natural for them to be fed to reptiles, but what bothered me wasn't that they were bred as food, but that they had to live in such appalling conditions and the way they killed them. Baby mice would simply be hurled to the floor, where the impact usually caused a fairly swift death. Adult mice would be held by the tail and whacked hard against the edge of a table. The ones that didn't die on impact had their necks broken with knives. The rats were the worst of all, because rats are such intelligent, sensitive animals. They'd grab them by the tail and whack them against the pavement outside. I have no idea how many survived and had to be hit a second time because I couldn't witness my favourite animals being killed in such a barbaric way. I often supervised the mouse deaths so I could point out survivors and make sure their suffering was ended as the employees doing the job usually failed to notice.
I got so desperate at one point that I started smuggling baby rats home in my handbag so at least some of them could lead happy, long lives where they were loved and well cared for.
The reptiles themselves didn't receive much better treatment. Their enclosures were too small, but the main issue was the constant epic plague of mites. The entire time I worked there the poor reptiles were crawling with mites. They got in everywhere; under their scales, in their eyelids, in their ears. It was usually my job to pick off the mites and give each reptile a mite bath and coat them in anti-mite powder. There were dozens of reptiles so it was a very laborious task. They were never all de-mited at once so they caught them back almost as soon as I was done removing them. I even had to give the very large and pissy goanna mite baths. He was easier to treat in some ways because he didn't have scales they could burrow under, but trying to remove mites from the corners of an enraged goanna's mouth resulted in dozens of bites. He'd also literally shit all over me the whole time and foul up the water so I'd have to change it and start again.
The outdoor cages with the sugar gliders, rabbits and guinea pigs were every bit as bad. They were foul. There was literally no place on the ground or bedding that wasn't covered in shit. In fact, the rabbits had taken to sleeping in their litter trays and avoiding the rest of the enclosure. The sugar glider enclosures were especially vile because of all the fruit that was rotting and mouldering on the ground.
I ended up having to quit because it was making me extremely depressed and emotional working there. No matter how hard I tried I was too low on the totem pole to make any changes. There were way too many animals for me to be able to single-handedly keep them clean and nobody there seemed to give any fucks about the conditions or improving them.
There was only ever one animal there that I ever saw treated well, and that was a massive sulphur-crested cockatoo who belonged to my boss. She adored that bird and brought him to work every day. HE wasn't crammed into a tiny cage with no stimulation and the cheapest food there was. He was allowed free range and stayed on a perch in the open. Everyone had to walk past him to get up the steps to the office and he was an absolutely foul-tempered bird. Every single time anyone walked by him he would launch at them and try to bite them, and my boss found that hilarious. Cockatoos are very intelligent and he was very pleased with the reaction his attacks would get from his owner and from the employees so it just encouraged things. At the time I was very afraid of large birds so it really freaked me out when he'd launch at me. My boss actually yelled at me one time because I said 'No!' very firmly to the bird when it grabbed my shirt and tore it. To this day, even though I own birds (including a fairly large cockatoo) I can't stand sulphur-crested cockatoos and avoid them.
The worst part is that it was a nature education center. We were supposed to educate kids about Australian wildlife and teach them to love and respect animals and care for them. We were supposed to set an example and all we did was make hundreds of animals live short, horrible lives.
It's actually been kind of therapeutic to type that all out, sorry it's such a novel. I love all animals and it deeply disturbed me to be in a position where I saw such horrific neglect and couldn't do anything about it.
tl;dr: I worked in the most reprehensible hellhole in Australia
