2 crabs found dead underground!

[Graz73]

Hi, our 3 crabs had been doing well in there since 2019. once we figured out the correct substrate, temperature, foods, waters and other features there seemed to be no issues that we couldn't fix. If they got ants or algea, we cleaned it out and they were OK. None of those things have happened in a while.

It was time to clean out the tank though. So we took our youngest crab out of the enclosure while we cleaned it. He seems fine.

BUT, it had been a while since I saw a couple of the crabs. So I took out the water bowl and found one of them under the bowl buried in the sand. He was dead. Had been for a while. Either he somehow got himself stuck or found this area as a safe place to molt and it was a bad molt, or died for some other reason. He was our biggest crab with a newer well fitting shell.

So after finding that one, I dug around and found our second biggest crab, buried near the bottom of the tank in coconut based substrate. Also dead. He was almost just an exoskeleton and a shell.

These two dead crabs had fought in the past, but as far as I can tell, they had not fought or anyhting in a year or more.

Although this was sad, what can I learn from this to keep the 3rd crab alive?

[hermitcrablover2]

Poor crabbies! I don't know what could have have happend, maybe a bad molt like you were saying? Was there anything weird on/near the hermit crabs that could've caused death? Make sure to take the bodies out of the tank

[Graz73]

Yeah, we removed the bodies, cleaned the tank and boiled all of the empty shells.