tell me everything about molting

That sums it up. Can you tell a new owner about the do's and don't of molting.

 

Do - leave them alone. For several months. It's stressful - that's why we're all members of at least one forum!

Don't - dig them up, change the tank's layout, or stop caring about humidity/temp or changing food and water while they're down.

Don't - use calci-sand, Hermit Crab Sand, or anything other than playsand or aquarium sand or coconut fiber as your substrate.

Do - feed them shrimp and other sea critters once they resurface.

Don't - look in any windows they might have left open, especially with a flashlight - they need darkness to release the hormone that allows them to actually molt.

 

Actually, it doesn't always take several months. It depends on size. As low as 3 weeks if they're small and as long as 4 months if they're softball sized.

 

This is the hardest one for me. I had to tape a cloth over the side of the tank because one of my babies is molting right *there.*

 

I have several tiny sized crabs who take 2 months to molt, and a medium who takes the same time. Just because a certain size isn't "supposed to" take X amount of time to molt doesn't mean it won't. Rack and Benny's first molts after I got them had them underground for just shy of 2 months. They were TINY PPs - under 1/4 inch shell openings at the time. They've molted pretty much every other month since then, where they'll be up maybe a month or so at a time, then molt again. Benny's growing much faster than Rack and is now a borderline small crab, but Rack's still tiny. Then you get Spaz, my medium PP, who molted in a month and a half. I've stopped predicting when they'll come up - with my sizes of crabs, they're molting more often than not, and every time they return to the surface, I'm so surprised by how much bigger they've grown. It's more fun to try to forget them when they're molting (not forget, but just stop trying to figure out when they SHOULD be done, and when you should start worrying) and just let them do their thing and be happy when you get to see them.

 

I think they are just hanging out in the corner although one was buried a bit deep but came out the next day.

 

Would it be likely to see a big pincher just on top of the sand and it be from a molting crab. I found a pincher but can't find the crab with the missing claw. I have three or four unaccounted for.

 

That sounds like a dropped limb, not a molt. With a molt, you'd see the entire exo at once unless someone took a piece of it and took it somewhere else. Is the pincher hollow? It's a bit hard to tell, but look at the top of it - a dropped limb will have these white parts that show where it was attached to the crab.

 

I didn't look at it that close but it was just the pincher, like the end joint only...if that makes sense. I still can't find the one missing a claw without digging everyone up that has dug down. So stressful...I guess I will wait a little longer.

 

Yeah, that's all you can do. Right after I introduced my 4 new Es to the tank, I had one of my PPs drop a leg, but I never saw them as they dug down right away so I never found out whose it was because both molted and I never saw a missing leg on them.

 

Update on the crab with the missing pincher......he showed his face I guess it was yesterday. He looked a little pale but was eating. But I knew he would die because he then spent the rest of the eveing and day today around the water bowl. I have had a few die after hanging around the water and not leaving. He was dead tonight when we came home from my son's baseball game. I'm surprised he made it that long.

 

How do you treat your waters? I've never heard of a crab hanging out by the water to die - the only time mine hang out in/near the water is when they're preparing to molt.

 

I use bottle spring water. I had one crab climb up on the sponge and stay there for several days and I finally picked him up and he was dead. Smelled like dead fish. I don't know why they come out from where ever they are hiding and hang by the water, then die. Others are going in and out of the water and are fine. But this was the one that dropped his big pincher. I couldn't figure out who it was for nearly a week and then I saw a new guy out and about and bingo, it was him. This whole hermit crab thing can be difficult.

 

It took a week for my hermlet to molt, but that's just my experience. . . Ya'll have probably had more molts than I, because I have only had one!!!

 

when Violet molted in sep- she only took a week. In my experience, that's how long it usually took with all my previous crabs or 2 wks tops