You can now pre-order “Crabnapped! A Land Hermit Crab Story” – a hardcover colour children’s book written by Vanessa Pike-Russell with the assistance of Geoff Pike, lovingly illustrated by Anastasia Obrucicova
“Rocky and Crusty are two land hermit crabs from tropical Broome, Western Australia. In the heat of the day, the land hermit crabs hide beneath leaf litter or in trees and sleep. At sundown, you can see hermit crabs on the beaches or mangroves in search of food.
There they meet other crabs including Moxie the scary soldier crab, Brutus the huge mud crab and Fitzy the Fiddler Crab – who has one claw much bigger than the other.” (Read more)
You will receive a signed edition with a special note from Vanessa.
Orders over $300 receive free shipping.
Hardcover 28 by 20 cm. Printed via Snapfish Australia and shipped signed with a personal note of thanks from Vanessa
Each purchase will also be supporting Hermit House – a non-profit organisation with a captive-breeding program for land hermit crabs. From the sale of every book, $2 will be donated to Hermit House 501(c)(3)
Hermit House 501(c)(3)mission takes seven parts:
1. Establish a reliable captive-breeding program for land hermit crabs
2. Continually improve the methods for captive-breeding land hermit crabs
3. Mentor and support potential land hermit crab breeders
4. Educate the public on the capture and abuse of wild hermit crabs for the pet trade
5. End the sale of wild-caught hermit crabs
6. Preserve populations of wild hermit crabs and the lands they inhabit
7. Host CRAB CON, our annual, educational hermit crab conference
There are Hermit House breeders from the USA. Australia and a few places around the world are raising baby hermit crab eggs from hermit crabs that breed in captivity. The eggs have to be removed from the hermit crab habitat – known as a crabitat – and put into a special aquatic breeding tank called a Kriesel where they will go through several stages of development – from egg to zoea to juvenile and then air-breathing hermit crabs that carry a shell and then walk onto land. They are then raised in a crabitat with a substrate (usually sand and coconut fibre in a 5-1 combo) in a temperature-controlled environment with heating, humidity, the temperature in the desired range, etc as they are tropical land hermit crabs.
For more information about Hermit House go here:
