Attacked, stressed or molted? I'm so confused

stacyzara · Post by **stacyzara** » Sun Jul 05, 2015 4:55 pm

I couldn't decide where to post this, so if it needs to be moved please just let me know. We are new to the hermit crab game. Our daughter ended up with two after a trip to the beach, gifts from some friends we went with. They were fun so we decided to add to our collection.We bought three new hermit crabs from the pet store. Unfortunately we were unable to make it home that night to put them in their crabitat, but we outfitted them as best we could in one of those crab motels they sell at the beach over night. Before we went to bed I noticed that the bigger one kept flipping the littlest one over any time he came out of his shell. I tried to do some general googling about it and came up with either aggression (likely over a shell?) Or establishing a pecking order. Since the possible aggressor was so much bigger and there was no way he'd be able to fit in the tiny shell I figured they'd be ok until morning and went to bed. First mistake. The next morning I went to check on them only to find out the little one had been ripped half out of his shell. His big claw, several little claws, and his eye stalks were laying in a clump beside his shell which still had several small claws in it. I assumed he was dead. There was what appeared to be white, stringy "meat" still attached to both the shell and the clump beside it. It was awful. I put his pieces and his shell in a baggie so we could bury him. Second possible mistake. That was 6 days ago. We got busy and hadn't had a chance to bury him until today. We went to dig the hole and when we got the bag HE WAS CRAWLING AROUND INSIDE THE BAG. Still in his shell. What?!?!He has no big claw, so we set up a small isolation tank. He was only in there for a couple hours before he was out exploring the other shell I put in there and eating some food. Got a better look at him and he doesn't even seem to be missing that many legs (obv still no big claw), but his eyes also look fine. He ducks in his shell when he sees me or a sudden light (once it was dark).What in the world is going on??! I know crabs can drop claws but multiple claws and eye stalks, AND live in a sealed ziploc bag for almost a week? No food, no water, no temperature monitoring. I'm very confused. Could he have been molting and just let the big crab pull off the molt and his big claw? Did he regenerate most of that in one week? Is he a zombie cran who is going to eat me and my family in our sleep? Any insight? (Also assuming he's not a zombie, can he rejoin the general population at some point? He's considerably smaller than the others and has no big claw, but we did get rid of what we thought was the killer crab so at least there's that. )Thanks in advance!

Crabber85 · Post by **Crabber85** » Mon Jul 06, 2015 3:12 am

My apologies for the late reply.It does sound as though he had been in the process of molting likely because he'd had to postpone it for far to long and was forced into it where he was, this is very common unfortunately and most hermitcrabs who surface molt like this wind up being the victim of cannibalism.The apparent bully could have been trying to pull the molter out because molting hermitcrabs do produce a smell that is said to be irresistible to other hermitcrabs and drives them wild so it is likely that the small crab was already producing the molt smell at the store and when he was confined in such a small space with the other crab it was just too much temptation.The molter should be fine and over the course of the next three molts will begin to regenerate any lost appendages when they come back they wont be as big as the rest of the body for quite a while.My recommendation is to keep the crab in iso for the next three weeks making sure to feed it well with things like organic peanut-butter, mushed bananas and raw or organic honey these are easy to digest high energy foods that will help the little guy recover.

stacyzara · Post by **stacyzara** » Mon Jul 06, 2015 4:21 am

Thank you so much for the reply. I just can't believe he's still alive! Especially since I thought he was absolutely dead when I saw his eye stalks in the chunk that got pulled out. Thanks again!

Crabber85 · Post by **Crabber85** » Mon Jul 06, 2015 5:10 am

Your welcome.When a hermitcrab sheds its old exoskeleton it does it in one piece starting with the legs and then the head this all slips off over the crabs head like when we take a sweater off over ours, the soft tail is the only part of the body that does not get shed because it is soft and pliable enough to grow like our skin.When a hermitcrab molts it actually becomes paralyzed for about three days this to prevent the crab from moving prematurely while its still soft which would result in extensive damage to the new soft layer of exo.Under normal circumstances the crab would have left the old exo alone for about three days while it regained the ability to move and hardened up a little, it would have then eaten most of the sheddings which contain the necessary calcium and chitin(kite-on)to fully re-harden the new outer layer.