HCA: Hermit Crab Association

Hey guys, this is kind of an emergency but it would take forever to fill out the form and it wouldn't help anyway. So currently I have four crabs in my tank, I had a pet sand in a 20gal, and the other three were in the 50gal. The pet sand hatched a week ago and I moved the little guy into the 50gal with the rest.The thing is, the three crabs in the 50gal were ALL down, molting. I was wary about making the transfer but did it anyway, and the lone crab aboveground has been pretty content so far. Until tonight... I heard some scratching noises and clinking shell-against-glass sounds, all pretty normal. So I went to check on him, expected to see him climbing something, but I couldn't find him. I then realized the sounds were coming from below-substrate level, and noticed a small crater in the sand where he probably dug a tunnel. The scratching and clinking sounds seem to be coming from a particular spot below substrate- the spot where one of the 3 previously molting crabs has been molting for a few weeks now. (I know this because the tank is on a glass stand, so I can see right through to the bottom.) I'm am so terrified that the newcomer is down there trying to eat the molter, and I haven't been able to bring myself to look underneath. Normally I'm squeamish just to look at a crab molting, but witnessing one of my crab eat another crab alive might just give me a lifetime of PTSD and if I checked and discovered that the molter was being eaten alive by the tunneler, what can I even do? Is there anything I could do at this point? The scratching has been going on from about 30mins to an hour, plenty of time for the molter to have died. I don't know what to do....

EDIT: I forced myself to check and thank the gods he isn't being eaten alive. The tunneler kind of veered away from the molter, scratching sounds are coming from him digging around.

avocadocrabbies wrote: ↑

Fri May 29, 2020 11:13 pm

EDIT: I forced myself to check and thank the gods he isn't being eaten alive. The tunneler kind of veered away from the molter, scratching sounds are coming from him digging around.

That's good to hear! And is exactly the reason that it is important to have deep enough substrate and not a crowded tank. The don't go 'looking' for another crab under the sub, but they might accidentally come across one when they are digging and tunnelling. The only time one of mine dug up another was when I did not have deep enough sub.