bimbo.baggins3
New Member
Hi there, so I got three dwarf blue legged hermit crabs to help with the algae situation. Of course I also got them some food and plenty of shells to change into (1/4- 1 1/2 in. Openings), some of them were chipped but there were plenty of suitable ones that weren’t! Last night I came home and I found one of my crab’s shells empty with a small hole in it (I buried it along with the crab but if y’all wanna see I can dig it up) and found the crab (Bo) without a shell clinging to the top of the wooden structure I have in my tank. Bo had been fighting with another crab, Luke, basically since day one but I assumed it was just a feelers war to arrange the pecking order as neither seemed to be trying to take the shell off of each other. Luke was chilling in his favorite spot on the other side of the tank and didn’t seem hurt at all. I originally guessed that maybe the shells I bought hadn’t sufficed so when Luke finally decided to get Bo’s he accidentally broke it? And then Bo probably didn’t want it back after that. But that’s just a guess. Anyways I gently coax Bo down from the structure and into the center of it where I lined that with shells for him to choose from, food and then I barricade the area to minimize disruptions cuz I knew he was very vulnerable at that time. I leave him be for an hour then check on him again, not touching him directly but moving some things around him to see if he responds, he did and I repeated this a few times before going to sleep. He seemed as if he was checking out one of the shells as he was moving around all sides of it so I thought I’d probably wake up to him in that shell, wrong. When I woke up I immediately checked on him and when he didn’t respond to anything being moved around him I checked for signs of molt. He didn’t seem to have any and i hadn’t noticed any pre-molt signs in him before. However he didn’t stink when I took him out but I don’t know if that means too much (I think if he was just molting and I buried him I might actually cry). I know I should’ve just posted on here before and waited a bit before just throwing him out but I was just so sure that he wasn’t alive and I would’ve noticed the signs of molting as I’ve read a ton of articles on it. Anyways I just want to know why do you guys think he died? Or was he not actually dead, just molting and I’m a terrible crab owner? Honestly either way I wanna know so I can know what to do in the future. Thank you.
