HCA: Hermit Crab Association

Hi everyone, I have a question so next week we are moving and 4 out of 7 of my crabs are molting. I don’t know where they are and I don’t want to disturb them, but I also don’t want their tunnels to collapse when we move the tank. How do I go about removing them? Thanks in advance!

I had to move last month and almost every single one of my crabs were molting. I set up tupper ware containers with some substrate and moss, and VERY carefully dug them up.
Only Mango passed away, due to what I believe was stress. All the other crabs are doing great.

Yeah, what Pumpkincrab did is what I would recommend. Only downside is molters need to stay isolated until their activity levels go back to normal.


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Pumpkincrab wrote: ↑

Thu Jul 15, 2021 11:32 am

I had to move last month and almost every single one of my crabs were molting. I set up tupper ware containers with some substrate and moss, and VERY carefully dug them up.
Only Mango passed away, due to what I believe was stress. All the other crabs are doing great.

This is interesting, I wonder if I can follow up on this. Did the crabs finish their molting process? Or did some of them postpone the molt, i.e. did they decide to "abort" the procedure since they had been disturbed? I recently had a situation a little like this, she seemed about to molt, started making brief digs into the substrate and back up again; then I moved her to a new tank (because that had been my plan and it would have been problematic for me to postpone it), and she did not show further interest in molting.

They are able to put off molting if conditions require it, but the longer they do that, the more it increases the risk that something may go wrong in the molt. If they put it off too long, they will die. I expect crabocado's crab decided she needed to learn about her new surroundings first to make sure it was safe. Once she is convinced of that, she will probably settle in to molt again. If I remember correctly, she's been in captivity for at least 8 years? So she is probably old enough/big enough to put off molting for some time and still be okay.

As for digging up molters for a move, I believe wodesorel answered someone previously that, if the tank is fairly small, the substrate is properly "sandcastle" texture, and the distance to be traveled is also pretty small, it could be fine to handle the tank carefully, put it somewhere where it won't get bounced or jostled (like the back seat of a car with good suspension), and move without digging them up. But if it's going to be a long trip or the tank is going to be handled by movers, you probably don't want to take the chance of rough handling causing an "earthquake." For that matter, if you have quite a large tank, you will most likely want to take a lot of the substrate out before moving it, to minimize the chance of breakage (moist substrate is really heavy and might strain the glass when the tank is being stressed by movement).

crabocado wrote:This is interesting, I wonder if I can follow up on this. Did the crabs finish their molting process? Or did some of them postpone the molt, i.e. did they decide to "abort" the procedure since they had been disturbed?

They’ve been underground for a while they’ve likely already molted and are in the recovery phase. If they haven’t a few days’ postponement aren’t going to do much harm.


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crabocado wrote: ↑

Sat Jul 17, 2021 3:57 am

This is interesting, I wonder if I can follow up on this. Did the crabs finish their molting process? Or did some of them postpone the molt, i.e. did they decide to "abort" the procedure since they had been disturbed? I recently had a situation a little like this, she seemed about to molt, started making brief digs into the substrate and back up again; then I moved her to a new tank (because that had been my plan and it would have been problematic for me to postpone it), and she did not show further interest in molting.

It seemed all had finished molting and were just chilling when I dug them up, except Mango. She was very pale white. I never did find her exo, but then again, since she was the last crab I dug up I was mixing up the sub a lot. She was the crab who passed- due probably to stress, despite my best efforts of isolating her.
My crabs were only out of their tank for a few hours- dug them up around 7am or so, got them in their tank in early afternoon. One of my crabs did go down and dig the same day or the next, but I am unable to tell if they were molting or just de-stressing.