Indonesian Hermit Crab

The Indonesian hermit crab, Coenobita brevimanus, is a large purple land hermit crab. Indonesian, or Indo, is a pet-trade name; museum lists call it the purple hermit-landcrab, and its range runs from East Africa and the coast of India through Indonesia to the Cook Islands and the Tuamotus. It is one of the three most common land hermit crabs in the Indo-Pacific and lives farther from the shore than the other two. Like all land hermit crabs it has a larger left claw that plugs the shell opening, and it favors old, worn turban shells.

It is an omnivorous scavenger that preferred fish to fruit in feeding trials and will prey on smaller hermit crabs, so house it with care. Its larvae develop at sea through four planktonic stages before the young take a shell and move onto land; researchers in Japan have raised it from larvae, but only with that marine stage. Hobby care guides for land hermit crabs call for both fresh and salt water, 80 to 85 degrees F, at least 75 percent humidity, substrate deep enough to bury in for molting, and unpainted spare shells. It is not covered by CITES or the US endangered species list.