HCA: Hermit Crab Association

Sooooo the majority of my crabs have all been under since January. For the longest I only had 2 crabs out instead of all 10. One by one they’re surfacing and currently from what I can tell is 4-6 are out right now and not burrowed. Though I did have one of my larger hermies re-surface about 2 weeks ago after going down a couple months ago, but it seems that they have re-burrowed themselves because I’ve looked all around my tank and haven’t seen them. Which I think is odd. Why come up after being down for so long just to go back down again? But anyways I was rearranging some things in the crabitat and as I was moving something around near the substrate I hit an object. I checked to see what I had bumped into and it was a shell... an empty shell. On the far left side of my tank I have a shell shop and I found this empty shell on the far right side of the tank. I do not remember if this particular shell was occupied by a crab and/or what crab occupied it. If I have to take a guess i’m gonna assume that there was a crab inside of the shell and was molting but died because of molting issues or was murdered by another crab and eaten. How else would that shell end up over there? I don’t smell anything inside of the tank and I don’t know if I should dig slowly and gently in the area that I found the shell...


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edit: to answer any questions you might ask ~ my substrate is 6inch ee. i have 2 large pools salt & regular fresh deep enough to submerge. 50ish shells in all sizes in a shell shop. i feed them daily products from hermies kitchen/hermit grub/etc from etsy, right now the bags of food are: smoothie, trail mix, veggie, worm casting, skeletal power repair, color enhancement. humidity currently at 78%, temp currently is 80degrees f.

edit pt 2: I literally made this post like 10mins ago and the larger hermie that I mentioned earlier (went down for a molt, finally came up, disappeared again) well i’m watching him re-surface right now. how funny.

I would not dig. If there had been a crab in there are it's not anymore, digging isn't really going to give you any additional information, and it is doubtful that there is a crab in distress that needs help. You risk injuring other crabs who are under, if you dig.
How big is your tank?

curlysister wrote:I would not dig. If there had been a crab in there are it's not anymore, digging isn't really going to give you any additional information, and it is doubtful that there is a crab in distress that needs help. You risk injuring other crabs who are under, if you dig.
How big is your tank?

75 gal


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