Need help

[Jenny55]

One of my crabs has been struggling for almost a month. I think he came up after a molt, switched shells, then became very inactive and hiding out in the back of the tank. Can't tell if he's eating, I've seen him at the water several times but mostly salt water. This morning he was out of his shell and I'm wondering if he was too weak to move with the shell, I put him in a bowl and he picked another shell. He is very pale in color, his body is a light beige. I put him on a plastic lid with some egg and eggshells yesterday, I thought he ate but its hard to tell. I'm wondering if there was a problem with his last molt, curious to see what you think. The other 4 crabs are good, all came up from molting with no issues. I have pics but I dont think I can send them here. Thanks so much, any advice would help.

[Hermitsandplants]

Definitely keep that crab separated, add lots of shell varieties in the iso tank, and dont handle him more than necessary. hope he gwts better!

[curlysister]

A crab will drop it's shell when it is too weak to carry it. Have you checked out our 'naked crab' care sheet? It tells what to do and gives some possible causes for the 'streaking'.

viewtopic.php?f=27&t=122302

You did the right thing by putting him in a bowl with only a few shells to choose from. Now that he is back in a shell, I would keep him isolated from the other crabs - if you don't have an iso tank, you can just use something like an empty margarine container with holes poked it in. Feed him some high energy foods like honey and peanut butter. We can't do any diagnostics on crabs, so sometimes cannot know why a crab gets sick.

[Jenny55]

Thanks guys, Thor passed today he was back out of his shell last night so I set him up in a 10g but was too late or he was just that sick. I didnt think about moving him earlier since he was still able to get to the water and food. Then the shell came off and I saw how tiny he was, I figured he was too weak to carry it. Lesson learned. I named him Thor cuz he pinched me when I got him. Here's a cute pic of the little bugger, and a pic from when I first got him.. pincher open and ready for me

Sent from my SM-S906U using Tapatalk

[curlysister]

Aw, I'm sorry to hear that.
We can't do any diagnostics, so can really never know what happened - it does not sound like anything you did or didn't do.

[Jenny55]

Thank you

Sent from my SM-S906U using Tapatalk