HCA: Hermit Crab Association

This is a picture of Pumpkin, who just came up after molting. You can clearly see the chunk of scarring on his BP from where the new coarse playsand must have rubbed it when the exo was still soft. It feels like a small indentation but doesn't appear to be bothering him. This particular batch of playsand appeared coarser than the previous batches but I went ahead and used it anyway. Pumpkin is the first to molt in this batch; I may just dump it after this.

Does it look like it will give him any problems with use of his BP? Did you buy your playsand from a different store? That's too bad that had to happen. I hope he does ok.

mosher3, the playsand had the same name on it as usual but when I opened the bag, it looked darker and felt differently than the other batches I'd purchased. I hope it's not a trend with this brand! I don't *think* he'll have problems because of this; crabs can get along pretty well with deformed or missing limbs. I imagine if it was really bothering him, he'd have dropped the limb altogether. I wonder what it does feel like though! Maybe once the limb hardens, they don't feel anything different, much as we would with scar tissue that's healed over? Hermit crabs can get infected limbs, but this actually looks and feels to be a closed injury (no oozing, black edges, etc.). Libby, my kids named him Pumpkin because he came in an orange shell LOL. He did come up a nice burgundy color though.

Are you sure it was from the playsand being coarse? There's been a few crabbers who use crushed coral for their substrate and have crabs molt in it. Not sure if they've had bad molts but wanted to share the info.

I honestly would think the sand was the cause as my last choice...I would have thought perhaps it just didn't form completely due to natural causes...or him moving during the molt, etc.

Oh - I just assumed it was the sand since it seemed so different from the other batches. I've not been happy with this brand since our hardware store decided to stop selling the softer, lighter golden playsand that I'd bought for years and went with the less fine white playsand but this bag seemed particularly gritty texture-wise. I've had minor BP scarring on other crabs before from what must have been movement post-molt, but this is the first crabby I've had come up with a more significant patch on his BP. I suppose it could have been the way he was resting on his old exo post-molt, but my first thought was the sand since it was different.In any case, Pumpkin seems oblivious to the problem - he is climbing and crawling around the tank and even used his BP yesterday to whap a shy Snowman away from the calcium dish so he could enjoy tanking up by himself.

It has to be one of our greatest fears about molting; not only that they survive, but that they also come up with all their limbs intact and straight. Honestly it sounds like something that may have happened during a molt due to positioning or even having something stuck to him perhaps when he was in the soft stage.I have always used the sand from the Lowe's type places and nary a problem.