HCA: Hermit Crab Association

6 months ago I bought 3 crabs, one large, one small and one medium.
I kept in a 80 x 48 x 50cm terrarium, 6 inches of substrate (playsand mixed with coco fibre). They have both fresh and salt water, I heated it and sprayed it to keep humidity up and fed them food from hermiesdelights.com.au.

Soon after getting them the medium one and small one went down to molt. The small one reemerged after. the medium still has not. I'm not sure if its alive or not.

The large one died a few months ago. It used to be active and explore the enclosure, but in the week leading up to its death it just stayed huddled against the glass where the heat mat was. One day i picked him up and moved him onto the food when I gave new food. The next day they were dead.

This week the same thing happened for the small one. It had become lethargic and didn't move much, just stayed huddled against the wall. Looked greyed like it needed a molt. Last night I changed the food and placed them in there. This morning I found it dead. I'm really just lost. I feel like a monster and that I killed them, but I tried my best and I don't know what I did wrong. I just feel so guilty. After the large one died I purchased a second small one and that one is molting right now, potentially with the medium. Just please give me advise, I feel so guilty and don't know what to do. I'll provide pictures when I get home tonight.

I suggest posting this in Emergency and filling out the questions.

...i hate to ask this but are you sure they were dead?

One of mine acted similarly a when I first got him. I wasn't sure if he was dead or surface moulting.
For a while their I was convinced he was dead. It wasn't his moult, he did that like a month or two later. Best I can figure is that he was sick or stressed or something. Why? I don't know. He was in his pps tank for a good while before this(which the HCA does not recommend fyi) and nothing had changed. It still baffals me what was wrong with him.

Like yours he hung out by the heat mat a lot before but I didn't think too much of it at the time. Then I moved him into his food bowl to do some clean up. When he didn't move the whole day and that night I moved him again. He came out layed on his side and he dropped every limb that was sticking out from his shell. Like just the weight of the shell crushed them off. I knew about surface moulting so I cut up a pop bottle and waited. I went to the HCA for help at this point because I was worried he was dead. Here I learned my hydrometer was slightly off but not enough to where it should have hurt him. I'm still at a loss to what was wrong with him.

After a while he seemed to come back from the dead, ate his dropped limbs(which still creeps me out) and dug his way out of his mini isolation. It's been a few months and now he's much better and by far my most active crab.

I wish I could have been more helpful but im still a newbie myself. I hope the more experienced crab owners are of more help to you.
Good luck.

I'm sorry.

I didn't want to add more to your anxiety and stress because I felt the same way when something similar happens to me and I really debated writing that. And really if it wasn't for the fact that one of your crabs had only recently passed I probably wouldn't have. Now I'm worried that I made a hard situation even worse for you and I am so sorry.

Hermit crabs go through a huge ordeal before they ever get to stores and hermit crabs frequently pass from the stress of that alone even if the new owners do everything right. If they came from the shops we have no way of knowing what they've gone through before they came into the hands of people trying to do right by them.
When I first got my crabs I was full of anxiety since it was something I had never done before and when my crab seemed to be suffering and I had literally no idea why, I was starting to feel regretful over getting them too. But slowly as the crabs settled in and I started to get a rough idea what to do I'm happy I stuck with them.
Oh and my crabs are in 3/4 to 1 inch shells and they took over a month to moult. And my smaller crab once hid under ground so long I thought she was moulting but wasn't. I was told on here that, 1. Bigger the crab the longer it takes them to moult. Small crabs a few weeks and bigger crabs can take three months. 2. If they go under ground, as long as you don't smell something like dead fish, Not to worry unless they've been under for like four months.
Again I am so sorry your going through a hard time with them. I was just the same not too long ago.

i’m really sorry for the loss of your hermies. are you sure they were dead? about two months ago one of mine surface molted and i was sure she was dead because i picked her up and all her limbs fell out. but she was still in there alive. i learned that the best thing to do it’s not touch them. since i had messed with her during her molt, she wouldn’t keep a shell on and unfortunately did pass.


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