Got a hankering for crabs...

[on:]

So I was in the Petsmart today and I went by the hermies concidering buying a couple newbies.  Yea, I didnt really feel like pulling out the ISO this close to christmas when I dont even have my tree up yet, but I felt like if I could find a hermie that "spoke" to me...so to speak....I'd have to take it home.  Well I get to the tank and realized again why I dont buy hermies from Petsmart.  There was a poor streaking crab dead just laying against the glass.  The rest were in those awful painted shells!  Yuck!  I guess I will continue only getting my hermits from Petco.  They have the best set up I've seen in a petshop.  They have fresh food and salt and fresh water.  Humidity gauges and substrait and mostly natural shells.  They have plenty of empty natural shells for the hermies to change into if they want.  I almost never have crabs die of PPS when I get them from there.  Do ya'll also have places you refuse to buy from b/c of bad conditions and painted shells? 

[Reply #1 on:]

I was at our Petsmart one time and we were looking at the fish, then we came to the end where the hermit crabs were...  It wasn't a very pretty sight, some looked like they were dead for quite some time.  It took me a long time to look for one that was alive.  Needless to say I told one of the workers there about it.  He said he would have someone go over and clean it, either way I suspect they don't do very much maintenance on the hermit crabs.

[Reply #2 on:]

my primary hermit crab source used to be the beach shops in virginia, but after having an increasing death rate due to PPS, i decided to swear off beach shops. the petco by me is nice, the petsmart was doing good for a while but went back to junk. i don't even want to get into the mom-n-pop shops i've been to. one really tried based off of advice i shared but don't quite get it, and the other shop's hermit crabs were kept on repti-carpet with their only source of water coming from those cricket hydration gel things ::face palm:: poor guys.

[Reply #3 on:]

I have yet to own any hermit crabs for myself but my sister used to have plenty of them. I'd take her to the store to get new ones every now and then... lo and behold, we're noticing a trend here! Petco had them in nice, roomy, well-kept displays... Petsmart had a tiny display full of dead crabs.

[Reply #4 on:]

the best pet store in my area would have to be pet north its one of those small pet stores but the people who work there are very animal smart and the take very good care of there hermies and there fish tanks are so clean they never have a dead fish who lost their life to the filter or other causes 

[Reply #5 on:]

There are three pet stores in particular that I would never buy from because of the horrible conditions.