I've had all 3 of my crabs for 5 years. They're in a 60 gallon tank and both the heat and humidity are kept around 80. There's about 9 inches of sand, but I want to add a bit more. The bugs:
Goliath: male, large PP, 1.75 opening turbo shell
James: male, medium E, 1.5 opening land snail shell
Chickie: female, medium PP, 1.375 opening turbo shell
So, the problem is that James keeps harassing Goliath whenever Goliath comes up from being underground. Goliath will go down (probably to molt), but a day or two later I'll come in to see James on top of Goliath and they're both in a crater because Goliath was coming back up for whatever reason. James doesn't grab him or anything, but he seems to try to spread his legs around him to try to cover him, except Goliath is at least three times his size. It seems like guarding except they're different species and both male. He also did the same thing once or twice in between instances of Goliath practicing his digging for his molt. I got a pic of that:
20211027_220422[1] Goliath clearly doesn't know what's going on and has defended himself, crushing a third of James' big claw and making him drop a leg.
I saw the whole thing once. Goliath had just come up and was still down in the pit, widening it for some reason, and James was just sitting at the edge, watching. It was pretty creepy. It was like ten minutes of this. James moved away from the edge at some point, but stayed nearby, and Goliath was turned away from him and brought his legs in to start digging down. James came back over and calmly walked over and climbed right on top of him. I separated them immediately of course. The whole thing was really weird and felt almost calculated.
Now James is separated in a 20 long and everyone is molting, so everyone's safe for now, but I can't keep him in there. He wasn't always like this. He's been doing this for two years now (although no one had been hurt before), but Goliath only molts once a year and they don't really dig much outside of that. I kept hoping it was a weird phase and he'd stop, but now he's lost a limb. I've tried giving different foods and sources of protein and calcium, but it hasn't changed anything.
I think it must either be that he wants his shell or that he's desperate for a girlfriend or any E friend.
James' shell is tiny on him. Once, while I was holding him, he stretched out of his shell all the way until even his last pair of legs was clearly visible and he still didn't feel like he was in any danger of falling out. The entire inside of his shell is gone. He's been wearing this same one for 3 years. But he has other shells to choose from and he never looks at them. And Goliath's shell would be huge and heavy on him. Chickie's shell is at least close in size to his, but he hasn't been doing the same thing to her. (He is aggressive towards her, but it's just a lot of pushing.)
So, I think it's probably that he needs a friend. He's been the only E for over 2 years now and before he even had a girlfriend. So maybe that's it? But I've never heard of a crab doing this before. Why would he do guarding-like behavior to a male crab that he's usually scared of because of his size? If he was doing it to Chickie it would at least make some sense.
Anyway, I'm not really sure what to do. I've been trying to find an E to be his friend, but haven't had much luck. I can't just keep him by himself in his current tank forever, so if I can't find him a friend soon I'm going to have to give him up. I'd really rather not, he's the one I've had the longest. He should be up from his molt any day now at least. Do you guys think getting him a friend could fix whatever's going on with him?
