The 2012 CSJ Calendar is finally ready for purchase! Congrats once again to all of our winners and thanks for continuing to keep this CSJ tradition going. I look forward to all the great crabby photos in the coming year!

Very well done!
The winning entry by MissCranky1 (Click to see full size)

Moon Glo

Day Glo

The winner receives a $20 gift card and 500 CSJ dollars to spend.

Its been nearly 2 months since I brought home 8 E's from Petco. Thankfully four of them shed their painted shells before being moved to the main tank.

The sole reason shells are painted is to entice your children into begging you for a hermit crab. In most instances the child doesn't necessarily want the crab but the brightly colored shells. This has been a losing battle for us for many years and I still have no ideas how to convince Petco and others to stop buying from suppliers who push painted shells.

Exact text of the original paper by Herbst:

The name Coenobita Clypeatus (usually pronounced seen-oh-bit-a cly-pe-ait-us) may be translated as "shield-bearing monk or cloister brother," which conjures up a truer image of this often gregarious and variously cloistered resident of tropical East American shores than does "hermit crab." But, like most common names, "hermit crab" or "soldier crab" in native parlance, will certainly endure. The animal so called belongs to a small family of terrestrial decapod crustaceans quite distinct from the marine hermit crabs. The family Coenobitidas is composed of two genera: Birgus and Coenobita. Birgus is represented by a single species, Birgus latro (Linnaeus, 1767), the Robber Crab or Coconut Crab of Indo-Pacific islands. Birgus has discarded the protection of an appropriated shelter except for a brief juvenile period. Coenobita contains seven species that inhabit tropical regions throughout the world and that live in discarded snail shells for their entire adult lives, changing to larger shells as they grow.