Molting Surprise

[mudplayerx]

I had just sat down on my couch to peer into my tank and observe the new things my live rock was sprouting, and my heart sank.
In the shadows of one of the caves was the unmistakable profile of two crab pincers. I was quite convinced that one of my hermit crabs had gone to the fish tank in the sky.
I hate moving my live rock, but having a corpse in my newly-cycled tank was unacceptable. I lifted the rock up and sure enough, there was a dead hermit crab. I scooped it up and examined it closely. It was a dead crab: claws, legs, antennae, even the meaty butt.
After disposing of the carcass, I went back to examine the tank some more. LO! No hermit crabs were missing.
What is the moral of this long-winded story? The molt of a hermit crab so closely resembles a living crab it is uncanny! I had no idea that the butt portion was molted as well.

 

[shels]

It really is amazing, the first time I seen that I just knew one of my crabs was dead. But to my surprise, thete were all there.
The best I have seen was my decorator crab, she was pretty big, around 5-6 inches. Anyways she would always decorate her self with stuff in the tank ( Macro Algae, sponges, mushrooms, feather dusters), well she molted during the night and I went to check everybody when I got up in the morning. There she was sitting on top of the LR in the middle of the tank as proud as can be holding the claw of the molt taking her decorations off and putting them on her self. If I did'nt know better I would have thought she had a friend. LOL

 

[rivrat]

I too just had an experience like that, I was checking my tank monday night before I went to bed and I saw one of my peppermint shrimp in between some live rock and it looked all pale. The first thing I thought was that it was dead but after examining it found out that it had just molted its outer shell. (LOL)

got to be a newbie