Crabs-R-Us

A little sidenote to the presents from Olivia's party...hehe

Andrew & Annemarie decided that they wanted to give Olivia her crab, but they gave us permission to pick it out. In keeping with the Little Mermaid theme, her new crab is named "Sebastian".

Of course, Steven still didn't have a crab at this point, so we purchased two new ones. Steven's happens to be a female, which finally has a name, "Boo". Suffice it to say, he wouldn't go for "Ariel"...lol "Boo" originally started out as "Blue", because her shell is painted that color. However, we know they do change shells every so often, so Steven shortened it to "Boo".

Now, to recap, we have (in the order they joined our family) "Hermie", "Two Claws", "Shelly" (our other female), "Sebastian" and "Boo". Our second crab ever, "Crabby", perished after a "shell fight" with "Two Claws".

A while back, after her first molt, Shelly abandoned her pretty little spiral shell, in favor of a "normal" round shell. Since then, she has molted again, just a few days after Two Claws decided to molt. Now, all three of our oldest crabs have been through at least one successful molt while in our care. Yay!

The two newest crabs have settled in nicely and now that there are five of them in one tank, we're noticing more activity overall. Everything we've read says they thrive in groups.

We gave them all a bath on Saturday night and really enjoyed watching them run around in the water. On Sunday morning, I peeked into the tank to see what they were up to and found that Two Claws abandoned his shell in favor of Shelly's original shell (the pretty spiral-shaped one). Now, Shelly has changed shells once and Two Claws has completed his second exchange. It gives a whole new meaning to the term "shell game"...LOL

I simply must remember to take some pics of them the next time my mom is here with her digital camera. They're alot of fun to watch and play with.