HCA: Hermit Crab Association

I have had my 3 crabs for a month now. After I had one died recently, I got my crabs a different cage and put in bedding on one side and sand on the other. As soon as I put the crabs in there, they started digging through the bedding. I have seen all of them, two always comes back up at night to crawl around, climb up the sides and get into the food bowl. The other one stays down. I have dug him up twice the other day, to make sure he is fine. After that, I decided to leave him alone. I don't know if he comes up or not at night like the others.


My question is, when do they start molting? And, when they stay under, how can they get the air they need? I don't know what to do, since this is my first time with hermit crabs.

The crabs might not be molting, but getting used to the changes in the crab tank...this may take weeks, if not a month or so.

I have dug him up twice the other day, to make sure he is fine.

This is definitely something I will never recommend anyone do, unless there is an emergency, such as a house fire or damaging earthquake or general evacuation. This adds to the general stress of the land hermit crab, one of whose many habits includes being buried for very long periods underground.

This is something definitely that new crabbers, including myself in the past, encountered and to which have had a bit of a hard time adjusting (especially when I wanted to play with it in the past). Unknowingly, I was just contributing to further stressing the crabs - leading to numerous deaths.

My question is, when do they start molting? And, when they stay under, how can they get the air they need? I don't know what to do, since this is my first time with hermit crabs.

Molting is very hard to determine, unless you are familiar with the crab anatomy: see the links on the right hand side of the forums and check out this website as well - http://www.thecrabbagepatch.com/molting.html

They can definitely stay underground for very long periods (months) when molting.

And if deaths do occur, don't worry. One thing many (not all, but too many) mainstream pet stores fail to impress upon unsuspecting buyers is the degree of difficulty of keeping these wild creatures, which, in my experience, is very, very HIGH (difficulty that is).

Also, for proper molting, you will need professional-grade marine/seawater used for keeping marine aquatics (if you didn't know so already).

I've got one crab, Jelly, who I've seen a total of maybe 8 days since Febuary. He hasn't molted, but will go under for 4-6 weeks and then come up for a day or two. After a couple days, he's back under ground.

But with my Ruggies, 1/7 of them is burried... the other 6 wander around during the day or sit all huddled up in the moss pit.

My PPs generally are under moss or underground during the day and come out about 9-10PM.

Sometimes it's kind of a downer to have a pet that seems to live underground, but that's just part of having these little guys

Crabs love to dig, and you don't need to dig them up to make sure they're okay. They're pros, they know what they're doing. The one that keeps going down, and stays down, is most likely getting ready to molt, so leave him alone.

You've received some excellent advice. You need to learn a bit more about crabs so you won't worry you when they something that seems weird to you but is natural to them.

Joel gave you one of the best sites to learn about crabs, as well as the Crab Care FAQ to the right of this post ~~~~~~~~~~~~~>>>>>>>>>

Another great site about crabs was written by Christa, our administrator on this site: www.hermit-crabs.com