Land Hermit Crab Shells

Land Hermit crabs use land or marine snail shells as homes so they can protect their fragile bodies. This is vital for survival.

The paint coated shells can be toxic to hermit crabs, even if the paint is non-toxic the hard coating applied after painting can be.
Paint chips off from the shells and aswell as being eaten by hermits, it also taints the water dish and or the crabitat.

Some painted shells are also found to be from unsuitable snail species, resulting in your hermit crab not using them, these shells are sold for effect not practicality.

Paint used can also become tacky because of the temperature and humidity of your crabitat, this can then glue the crab's delicate abdomen to the shell, causing the hermit crab to die.

There are also reports that hermit crabs are forced into painted shells in the most cruel of ways often ending in death.

• An example of this is crabs are placed in freezers until they are so cold they go limp, they are then pulled from their old shells and placed in a container with only painted shells to choose from.
  
• Or, holes are chipped in their naturally chosen shells and they are poked with needles until they vacate the old shell.
  
• Many other inhumane methods are used.

In short Please do not choose fashion over safety, say NO to painted shells!

We have a huge range of safe shells in our online store - Hermie Shells

Material by Anita
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