HCA: Hermit Crab Association

During my deep clean I ended up moving 2 molters into containers and putting those in my temporary 55 gallon. The one in question is a medium to large E. I moved her into a hole in the substrate in the container on 5/19 with her exo. She appeared to have molted pretty recently sicne almost all of her exo was there. I put a large shell over the hole, sealed the container and put it in the tank. About 3 or 4 days later she obviously dug deeper herself as the large shell was half buried and the sand was significantly shifted in the container.

Tonight, 5/28, I saw her at the top of the container. The 55 is now empty except for one other molter in a container and one medium E that had been dug down when I did the deep clean, but was causing so much havoc in my 10 gallon ISO that I moved him to the 55, where he dug down 2 days ago. As a side note, that means I'm stuck running the 55 for a while. Grumble.

I decided to take the lid off the container and let her decide if she was ready to come out. She did, first spending a lot of time in the salt water, and now exploring the 55. Now for the question, how long should I wait until I move her over to the main 90 gallon with everyone else? I assume a bath would also be best since she didn't have to dig through much substrate after her molt to remove any molting smell.

I normally don't ISO mine either. I only did this for molters found during the deep clean. I know others have done this for deep cleans, or other reasons, as well and hope to get some input. She's certainly safe in the 55. There is lots of food for her so I don't think she'd go digging for the other molter even though the substrate is not very deep (darn E was NOT supposed to molt in there!).

i think i would give her at least a week, are you sure her new exo is completly hardened? that is my general rule

Once they start moving around like that I'll put them back in the main tank after a bath. You'll know really quickly if they aren't ready to be in as the other crabs will start following and harassing them immediately. Usually Es molt so quickly anyway that they would be up that soon even if they weren't in a cup. That she had buried down and then came back shows she had a normal molt.

The other option is to keep her in a proper ISO overnight with the bare minimum of food and water. If she's wandering around in the morning she's good to go back in!