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Anonymous
For species, you appear to be in possession of two Purple Pinchers, aka Carribean hermit crabs. They come from the edge of florida to the whole Carribean sea. They are the hardiest type of hermit crab available. They can live for 40 years and grow to the size of a softball, however in captivity it is nearly impossible to achieve this. They are very social, but hate overcrowding and lack of shells. The reason yours fought was probably because of a shell fight. If there is a shortage of shells they will fight, or if they are too crowded. Always allow 2-3 shells for each of them in case they want to change. Purple Pinchers like turbo shells a lot, so buy yours some of those either from a pet store or the arts and crafts store. Please don't buy painted shells, because the paint could chip off and kill them if ingested. Also there have been very sad cases of hermit crabs being sealed in from the hardening paint, which means they are trapped in their shells. You can buy crabs in painted shells though, and odds are the minute you expose them to non painted shells they will go into one of them. As for company, two crabs if fine buy you can fit 5 in that ten gallon tank, but make sure they aren't too big. I'm sure you could use your good judgment on this. 5 medium sized crabs sound reasonable. If you have lots of things for them to climb on, they will have more space basically, and less of a territory problem. In the wild they travel in colonies of 100. They breed in the wild quite well, but it is so complicated to do in captivity that I won't go into detail on how it works. I'll just say you would have to invest a couple thousand dollars. Anyway, gender doesn't really matter, since it hard to distinguish them apart.
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