Crabs keep pushing empty shells into freshwater pool

[catiestewart]

So I have 3 golfball-ish sized crabs (slightly smaller) and one the size of a quarter. (sizes including shell). One of the larger ones is in an iso tank molting. The rest are in a 20gal long tank with 2 pools (one large saltwater pool that they used to love, but haven’t really been using this past week and one smaller freshwater pool that is only big enough for one crab to submerge in at a time), 7in cocofiber/play sand substrate, and a few decorations/hides/climbing toys. I have a large shell shop in there with about 30 shells around the golfball crab size and I’m about to add about 20 more for the smaller one.
The freshwater pool is the perfect size for any of them to dunk their bodies in, none of them can fit completely under the water but it’s large enough that any of them can dunk their shells in fully.

For the past few days, every time I wake up, there is one of the larger empty shells just sitting in the pool, taking up almost all of the space in the pool. They’re seemingly going out of their way to push one of the shells into the pool every single day. I always take the shell out and put it back with the others because they can’t use the pool otherwise (besides to maybe just stick their legs in)

Is there a reason they’re doing this? It’s kinda comical at this point but I want to make sure they’re not trying to signal something by doing this.

Humidity is constantly between 75-80% and temp is gradual fluctuations between 77-80° (I bought a 6”x23” ultratherm tank heater as the weather outside starts to cool down but it’s not here yet)

[HermitCrabFreak]

Sometimes crabs just do weird things like this. Maybe they dont like that shell? Lol. I'm not sure. I have no personal experience with this, but it's not screaming anything in particular out to me. The only thing I could think of is maybe one day you could upgrade to a larger tank? But that's all I can think of.

[catiestewart]

Sometimes crabs just do weird things like this. Maybe they dont like that shell? Lol. I'm not sure. I have no personal experience with this, but it's not screaming anything in particular out to me. The only thing I could think of is maybe one day you could upgrade to a larger tank? But that's all I can think of.

Ah, okay. Thanks. Saving up for a nice 55gal!


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[HermitCrabFreak]

Ah, okay. Thanks. Saving up for a nice 55gal!


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Awesome!! Good luck