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The Hermit Crab Addiction Store is now selling Epicurean Hermit Crab Foods, Hermiefun Hemp Nets, Worm Castings, Boost Powder, Red Sea Coral Pro Salt Water Mix, Fruit Chilly's, Mealworms, Sea Feast, Medicinal Baths and many more items for your land hermit crabs!
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[Hermies rule]

Molting... are you sure that you just saw the exo?  Are you positive he's dead??  My guess is that you disturbed him mid molt and he passed due to interuption.  Straws are very difficult to keep.  They are the toughest crab species to care for in my opinion.  I don't know what to tell you really!  I 'm sorry for your loss.

[hermitcrabluver1329]

Im sorry jesyca

[ILoveMyCrabs]

ARGH PLEASE HELP!!!
I have a molting Hermit Crab called Vinnie, anyway, a couple of weeks ago I was searching through the sand for him because I hadn't seen him in ages. I finally found him, he was curled up in his shell (And he looked way smaller) while his exo-skeleton was next to him.
Obviously he was in the middle of a molt, so I left him alone... But he has been in there for another week now and he hasn't even come up out of the sand. Now all the other Hermit Crabs (Especially Edna & Popcorn) have been trying to dig him up so I surrounded him with an ice-cream container which has no lid and no bottom. Also, another one of my Hermit Crabs was next to him when I first dug him up. I removed him, and put him on the other side of the tank. Now he has burried himself and has placed a whole lot of shells on top of him and I have no idea what is going on!! They have just started to molt and kill each other please help!

[annsminiatures]

Not sure what happened to my largest crab (Zinx).  He/she came up from a molt last night after about six weeks down missing an eyeball.  Everything seemed perfect before the molt and my other four crabs all molted flawlessly.  He/she is either a small medium or a large small (does that make sense?) - the legspan is approximately 2 - 2 1/2" in diameter.  I have a 20L with 1/3 cocofiber and 2/3 aragonite sand, humidity is typically in the low 80s, and the temp varies from the 70s to the 80s (I need to probably work on stabalizing it and will hook my heater up once it gets cooler here; right now it is just too warm for it).  We've had him for 2 1/2 months now.  The first few weeks we didn't have him in the best conditions (smaller tank with calci sand/hermie soil mix)  but I was fairly quick to change to the current set up.  I ordered the food from this site and have been mostly only feeding that to my guys since I got it.  However, he was already buried at that point.  He was purchased in a painted shell but luckily moved out of it after a few weeks.  Not sure how long he was in it total.  He/she is king or queen of the 'tat and is at least twice as large as the next sized crab so I'm thinking that it probably wasn't any sort of aggression.  I'd love to hear what may have caused this.  Thanks in advance!

[emmac350]

Wow, sounds like Zinx had a bad molt. The reason that crabs can come up from molts missing body parts has to do with how the molt itself goes. The crab has to pull each limb from the old exo (which can be hard because their new exo is fairly swollen with water in order to break the old exo) as well as his antennae, mouth and related mouth-pieces, and eyes. If a crab is afraid that it won't be able to get the new exo piece out of the old exo, it can basically choose to drop the limb, which is why some crabs come up from their molts missing a leg or a claw. It is a bit more rare for them to be missing an eye, but rest assured that it can grow back. I am posting links to pictures from ladybug15057's photobucket account (her name is Marie, and she's a fellow moderator on the HCP forum) that show Foxy Lady, a crab who she bought (before digital cameras) that was missing her left eye. After a few molts, the eye returned as just a tiny speck but grew with each molt until now, when Marie can't tell which eye was missing just by looking.

First Pic:

http://s187.photobucket.com/albums/x276/ladybug15057/My%20Pets/?action=view&current=Sparkles-Of-Beautiful-Eyes.jpg

A few more molts later:

http://s187.photobucket.com/albums/x276/ladybug15057/My%20Pets/?action=view&current=Regenerated--pupil--4th-molt.jpg

And a final pic:

http://i187.photobucket.com/albums/x276/ladybug15057/My%20Pets/close-up-foxy-lady-eyes.jpg

[annsminiatures]

Thanks so much for your fast reply and for the great picture links!  It is encouraging to see how beautifully that crab regenerated its missing eye!!

He/she still has the eye stalk, so I am hoping that is a good sign.  I'll have to try and get a decent pic of it and share it here.  Hopefully I will have nice after shots eventually just like Marie did!

[Mini.Mrs.Crabs]

Yeah my crab, Pirate had that eye problem. When I bought her she had a jelly eye. Then she molted and now she grew back her eye, but it is half the lenght of her other eye. It gets a bit longer with each molt. 

[annsminiatures]

It is good to hear that Pirate's eye is regenerating.  I'm hoping it won't be too long for Zinx since it is only the black part that is missing and the stalk is still perfectly intact.

[Enj]

Hey guys,


I think i have lost Speedy.... First I lost Rocky ater an unsuccesful moult, the Mr Muscles came through his fine, and now Speedy has died.... i think. He did't even finish his moult, the only thing i could tell had moulted was his eyes (they were clear???).

Here is a run down of what happened -

1. Found him naked, with another crab sitting on top of him. I was like what the....... But it looks like "Wilson' may of ditched his shell and stolen Speedy's!! (Or maybe it's Wilson, and Speedy is still in his original shell).

2. Left him for hlaf a day, still naked and didn't want to go into a shell. I put heaps of shells around (usually kept on the second level but he didn't look like he had eough strength to climb)

3. I 'sat' him in one of the shells the next morning as e was still naked, and put him in water to stop him from getting dehydrated. He crawled out no worries, so he was still moving.

4 He did finally get into a shell, and i left him alone.

5. A day later i checked on him, and he was nestled but not buried into the coconut fiber. I picked him up and that's when i noticed him half hanging out of his shell and the clear eyes, so i assumed he was moulting. I immediately put him back down and buried him a bit more to protect him.

6. The last few days he still hadn't moved... checked last night, still in the same position and was almost falling out of his shelll. He's started to smell a bit fishy, but there is still very very faint movement. And what i thought was his moulted exoskeleton, is still his body as he is all in one piece.


So what do i do... I am also concerned as my UTH seems to be drying out the coconut fiber too much, and even with covering up the tank and persistent spraying, itcan go right down to 60 percent humidity. After i spray a bit, it bounces up to about 80.

Help I am sad!!

PS I will have to take pics of Mr Muscles..... he seems to be happy and healty after his moult, but he is still 'blue' and his leg and big dlaw are slightly dented???

[emmac350]

Pictures of Speedy would certainly help...are you sure that the 'clear' eyes aren't exo eyes? That's what they look like in a shed exo. See if you can get a peek back into his shell and see if he's in there, lighter colored and smaller than previously.

[Enj]

I did try and get him out of the shell last night, he came out easily but i didn;t pull him out all the way. He definately still had his back end attached to his hard part of his body/his exoskeleten.

THing is he smelt really really bad last night, fishy, (that mean he's definately dead, right?) and no movement what so ever. I think he is dead, i buried him late yesterday evening

[cococrisp]

I know this was sort of old but I thought I'd post this pic of lucky after she came up from a molt. See, she couldn't move her claw because one side was higher than it other. It was weird but she's all better now and I think it's been two molts.

[Keara]

Today one of  my favorite crabs re-appeared from a molt and he's missing all the legs on one side.  I've never had a crab have this extent of deformity/issue after after a molt.  He's an E, a fairly little guy, fits in the palm of my hand, like a walnut. I'm so sad.  My tank is really large and spread out and without his big pincher and the legs on that same side, I'm afraid he'll have trouble getting around (too exhausting), eating, drinking (getting into the dishes, etc.)--forget climbing! So, I suppose I'm wondering, should I move him into a smaller tank, isolate him until he molts once or twice and has those legs back?  Then all the dishes will be smaller, closer together, easier?  It will be like having disabled access for my poor little guy.  I am completely serious, not even making a joke about that. I want to give him the best chance at survival.

[Jellybean]

ISO is what I'd do, for all the reason's you stated.  It usually doesn't take long before he'll go down again for another molt to try and re-grow his missing limbs.

Hang in there and keep us posted.   

   This is Wasabi. He is a PP, (Purple Pincher) and sadly, he has passed on. He was the biggest out of all the crabs I have owned so far, and out of them all, he lived the longest. He lived about 6-7 months.

~Hermies4Ever~

Land hermit crabs store a small amount of water in their shells just to keep their gills wet, thus allowing them to breath.