dead clearner shrimp

[obx fish]

last night I asked if anyone knew how to tell if a cleaner shrimp is dead or molting. well I'm 99.9% sure he's dead. I put him in the mail back to SWF. I really hope it's not an exoskeleton because I'd feel pretty stupid. Is there any surefire way to tell the difference? The only thing I know is that when it sheds it's hard to tell the difference...and I read that. I've never seen an exoskeleton of a cleaner shrimp. Also, how do you tell if a snail is dead? and do the crabs crawl out of their shells to die like hermit crabs do? Thanks to anyone who can help me with some info <img src="graemlins//confused.gif" border="0" alt="[confused]" />

 

[nss11110]

the shrimp shell will be totally empty when it sheds you can tell this by a real close look. the snail will come out of its shell when picked up and shook alittle, if dead it loses its hold on its shell and will fall out, it also stinks bad.sometimes hermits die and come out of their shell also mostly during the process of changing shells. hope you have a selection of shells in bigger sizes for the hermits when they grow. regular crabs molt. sometimes they die during the process. i lost my sally lightfoot during its molting.not sure why it does happen.

 

[obx fish]

From what was said I'm now 100% sure the shrimp is dead. We do have bigger shells for the crabs to change into. In fact we ordered 100 of them and put about 80 in the tank...the rest were broken ones. So they should have a big enough selection considering we only have 14 bluelegs and 10 scarlets.
75 gal, 2 emperor 400 filters, seaclone protein skimmer, 2 802 powerheads, 2 heaters, live sand,
25 lbs LR w/50 more lbs on the way, all kinds of polyps,4 feather dusters and lots of other unknown stuff growing on the LR, 1 porcelain crab(?) that came w/rock, pygmy angel, domino damsel, 2 striped damsels, 14 bluelegs, 10 scarlets, horseshoe crab, CB shrimp, 4 peppermint shrimp, pistol shrimp, 10 turbo snails. Our tank is about 7 weeks old. We lost a yellowtail blue damsel to getting sucked up in the powerhead...we bought filters for them immediately!