HCA: Hermit Crab Association

Hello.

My crabs have molted twice in the time that I've had them and before I could see them under the tank and that assured me that they were fine, just molting. This time around my one crab went down and has not come up and my second crab spent a lot of time underground too but not long enough for her to molt, I believe, and would be up for a night then be down for a few days. Now she's up most nights. So I'm not worried about her but I've found it strange as before they always been down to molt around the same time give or take a week.

But my other crab has not come back up and their was one instance back when he first went down where I wasn't sure if he was beginning his molt or just hiding out that I could have damaged a molt cave whilst moving things around in his tank.
Now today is again tank maintenance day and I was very careful this time moving things not to disrupt what's going on underground. My pools needed to be put a bit farther beneath the substrate as they get worked back to the surface over time and my ramps werent working out right with the added height. Again I was very careful with any digging or burying and did not find any evidence of a cave. Relieved I put the pools in place and was settling the dirt around when I found part of a claw.
Is this a bad sign? In the back of my mind I've been worrying about how I could have hurt my crab for weeks but knew that I could only wait and see. From what I could tell with rotating the sand between their molts, they have always fully eaten their exo in their molts before.
I know I won't know for sure until he comes up or a few more months pass but I need to know what you think. Is this a bad sign or am I making too much out of a small piece that honestly could have been overlooked from their last molt?

You want someone to guess whether you collapsed any molting caves while you were rearranging the tank. It is impossible to guess.
The reason we don't recommend doing any maintenance that involves any digging while crabs are underground, is so that caves don't get collapsed. There should be no digging or burying, and no pushing pools or other objects down into the substrate. Any time you do so, increases the chances of interfering with a crab who is underground.

Claw parts and leg tips often get left behind while molting because they're so thick to break through it's not worth the effort for the crabs to consume them. They get scattered when the crab digs back up, and often pop up in the oddest and most nerve wracking locations later on. That alone would not make me worried!

To quote Dr. Frankenstein;

"It's alive, it's Alive! It's Alive!"


Happy he's alright.