HCA: Hermit Crab Association

ok guys heres a new one for you..maybe.One of my E crabs has decided to keep himself submerged in the saltwater pond for what i think are excessive lenghts of time. we are talking 30 mins or longer. at one point today i thought it had drowned because he was hanging out of his shell in the water and looked very dead but he did retract yet slower than normal when i went to get the 'corpse' out. is this crab suicide or is he trying to soak the exo to make it easier to molt out of? or is it really confused and cannot get out of the pond even with easy access in and out of it? i am SO confused....

I have heard of straws behaving like this. That said, how deep are your ponds? Are they deep enough that he is completely under the water?My PPs do fool around in the salt water dish prior to molt (some of them, anyway), but my dishes are nowhere near deep enough to cause submersion. It may be that your E wants to fill up his shell or tank up for a molt, but keeps slipping under the water. Is he very small? I would suggest lining your pond with aquarium jewels, or keeping the water depth lower.

hello,the ponds are about 5 inches deep, so yes they are deep enough for him to get completely under water and i would say he is good sized, the BP is larger than a quarter... an inch and a eighth...?is it silly enough to drown itself?

I don't think they would deliberately try to drown themselves, but there have been cases of crabs being trapped in deep water dishes and being unable to climb back out as the surface can be fairly slippery. When you say easy access, what do you mean? Your E sounds fairly large, but even for him 5 inches sounds pretty deep.

the easy access is that i have coral rubble and old 'live' rock creating a bridge that leads down into the pool and back out. the rock has a lot of little toe holds in it. even it he couldnt get out,he could come up part way... or even get a hold of the fountain pump to get out if needed. he just dosent want to it seems...he probably just enjoying a good soak and i am being concerned over nothing...

Hey Burrdeep,I've not noticed any recent posts on this thread and wondered what came to be of your crab? Did he just like the water and was enjoying himself? I hope it has a happy ending.

Hey there...Unfortuneately no, Moe did pass on roughly about three days later. But i have noticed something interesting... on a couple of crabs that have passed on from probable PPS, their abdomens were shrunk and dark with that dead fish smell readily apparent on them, even though they were found within hours of them passing on. Now i have lost two 'older' crabs that did not have the dark and thin abdomen but they were very plump, nice color and had more of and old shrimpy smell about them that wasnt nearly as offensive as the others. Is there bacterial infections or intestinal parasite that these guys can get and if so is there a site of thread i can refer to?

burrdeep, I am so sorry! I hate the thoughts of something going on in your tank. Crabs can get infections. When did this start happening? Can you trace it back to a newly introduced crab or something else new in the tank?

My time frame is so messed up right now... but i believe that this started with a pair of cavvies that i had found and brought home i want to say about a month ago,maybe six weeks. i thought those two were PPS. then there was a short cool spell temp wise that i had to fight and then the losses started rolling. at first i thought it was from being chilled but the reactions from the crabs diddnt correlate with a chilling. I did a complete tear down and remake of the tank along with a supplementary heater of a 75 nighttime moon bulb. Things chilled out for a while then. But i had used a standard heat bulb before that( about an hour's worth) and i think the one PP, made himself slightly cooked (didnt want to leave the heat source alone) I figured that was my fault and felt awful about that. The tanks location was then moved back inside to my bird room to help stabilize the heat and humidity. With that squared away, roughly two weeks ago, i lost Daquri, my hugemongoid strawberry crab. But i think that may have been age because he was HUGE,his BP was around the size of a gold dollar coin. with these two when i took their shells for 'recycle' i ended up tossing them, razor sharp edges on the inside of the shells spirals and yet they refused to change when they had ones to change in to!! Then Moe with the weired water thing just happened. But this is when i noticed the difference in the abdomen thing, the two possible culprit cavvies with the non eating and the thin darkened abdomens, Daq with the nice plump belly (it didnt help him any that he was a pig...a voracious eater and swimmer till the end) and Moe right in between...Just about everybody else seems active, i see them cruzing around, investigating stuff and eating, i have a few that are down but i assume that they may be molting or are stressed a little bit but i am not too worried yet... mostly because it dont stink in there and i see LOTS of little tracks and food gone the next morning all the time.Can these bacterial infections be treated at all?

Did you ISO the cavvies before putting them in the main tank? How many total crabs, including the cavvies, have you lost since then?

that is where i think my troubles started ... there was no iso on them. i was dumb and listened to bad advice. there have been eight total, several were one after the other. Moe was the last one here right now.

Well, I would definitely do a deep clean at this point. It sounds as if the cavvies may have started all this off, and at the very least the tank needs to be disinfected. At this point I would also ISO any crabs that are not "acting right", or seem to be sick. You can ISO them together, but in a tank outside of the main tank with no contact with your still healthy crabs.It's difficult to make assumptions, but 8 crabs in 6 weeks doesn't sound good either. I would err on the side of caution.As far treating the infections, I've not done anything like that and can't comment on it. If you post the question in the regular LHC, I'm sure a qualified crabber could help you with that end. And please, please ISO your newbies from now on, preferably for a month or so. I didn't use to ISO either, but after reading what others went through I changed my mind.

Burrdeep, I'm so sorry for your losses.Birds can get E.Coli, Salmonella and other infections too, and if you tend to your pets in a row and crabs can get infections, then it seems likely that cross contamination is possible. Make sure that the areas where you wash or place dirty pet items is thoroughly cleansed before and after. I use an antibacterial kitchen spray on my sink, faucets and counter tops and wash my hands well.My lovebird poops on whatever is beneath him. Before I clean his cage or dishes, I put newspaper on the counter, and instead of regular sponges, I use those white porous spongy things that come in a clear plastic tub and throw them away. I'm out at the moment or I'd check the name but the package makes a good hermie tub, and they're sold right next to sponges at the marketI can't say that any of this is what's affecting your tank, but it's something to consider.Good luck to you. My crabs and I have our claws crossed.