I brought my hermet crabs home, now what?

Question
 Okay so yesterday my family brought home two hermet crabs. We got a kit a while ago where you can mail and get hermet crabs, but we just bought them at petsmart. Are old kit came with a cage, a plastic cove, water and food dish, and sand and a few plastic plants. At petsmart we got a misting thing and a sponge as we live in Colorado and it's dry. We also got some hermet crab food. We have about 5 extra shells, 2 from petsmart and 3 from the ocean, and set everything up like the kit said. We will start giving them baths in a week and do it weekly. We also have to little excersixe playground things that we made are selves and sometimes let them into. Is there anything fun we can do with them besides watching them sleep?

    Thanks,
      Bayley

Answer
You can give them the first bath, but I suggest you do not give them weekly baths, it has been found by highly esteemed hermit crab experts who have owned them for 25 years or longer that weekly baths will do more harm by stressing them than good by keeping them moist. The most you should bathe the crabs is once every two weeks or every month. If your kit has room (I think I know what kit you are referring to) you should buy a repti-rock bowl from the petstore and use the bowl that came with the kit for fresh water and get some aquarium salt and the repti rock for salt water, this allows the crabs to pick how the water in their shell feels, if they want it all freshwater, they can do that, if they want all salt they can do that, if they want a mix, they can mix it themselves, if you bathe them every week, you wash out the water in their shell that they work hard to mix and they have to start over, but a monthly bath will help make sure the water in the shell is clean and not contaminated with sand and hermit poo, something the crab wouldn't be able to do by themselves. You can tame your crabs to walk on you hands, but you should give them two weeks to destress before you do anything with them besides that bath, otherwise you could cause them to "drop limbs" and die, you have to remember that possibly as soon as two weeks ago, your crabs were happily trotting around on a beach somewhere with thousands of their friends and enjoying the real ocean and all the natural things that go with it, you have to give them time to get use to not living that way anymore. After two weeks, you can then begin slowly encouraging them to come out of their shell while you hold them, get some really stinky food, canned mini shrimp from the supermarket help, because they can really smell it. Put one in your hand, and put the shrimp in front of it and slowly the heat from your hand and the smell of the shrimp will entice them to come out and either eat or try to escape, it's okay if they do try to escape, because he's still a wild animal, just carefully keep putting your hands under him so he doesn't fall, a hermit crab will remember that your hand lets him fall for a LONG time if you let him, it may even hurt or kill him. There is some thought that crabs can be trained to sleep at night and be awake during the day by simply keeping them awake all day by doing the hand training or taking them outside (keep misting them if the air is dry and hot) the sounds and smells of the outdoors will help them to become curious. After a couple days of keeping them up during the dya, they will usually take to this schedule naturally, if you need anything else, don't hesitate to ask.