Back Story:
I brought my new crabs home almost 2 months ago. I went into the pet store expecting to get three tiny crabs, but ended up with five tiny crabs (I’m kind of a sucker
). I have a 10 gallon tank that has a mixture of coco fiber and sand that is 6in deep.i have both fresh and salt water bowls and places to climb/hide. To my knowledge there is a mix of both E’s and PP’s in the tank.i keep the humidity at about 70-75% and the temp at 80 degrees (with heating pads on the side rather than the bottom of the tank)That all being said, when I first brought them home they ALL looked very gray, probably because the pet store didn’t have much in the way of substrate to bury themselves in. Needless to say, I expected all of them to bury and molt in the days following. This is exactly what they did... or so I think. Over the last 2 months I have never seen more then one of them out at one time, and I think it is the same one every time. I’m not sure why they will not come out from underground, and I’m pretty sure they don’t come out because the food bowl my not be disturbed for several days at a time. I’m worried that some of them are dead rather than molting, but don’t want to dig around for fear of hurting them. HELP!!!
The long-time crabbers often advise that crabs can stay under for weeks or months. We had one that lived underground, we never saw him except occasionally if I happened to be up at 3AM! You can also try smoothing out the substrate before you go to bed and look for little footie prints in the morning.