Scarlet Hermits Losing Color

rune

Member
Hello everyone,
Our tank has been setup for several months and everything has been doing great. We have a 55 gallon with around 80 pounds of live rock and 40 pounds of live sand. We have 2 clowns, 1 cleaner shrimp, and approx 15 snails of various types and probably 15 hermits. 10 of the hermits are small blue legs, 5 are big scarlets.
The scarlets appear to have faded, some worse than others.. one is practically white/pink and it looks as though one of his main legs that he uses to move around has broken off. He is the biggest of the bunch so I am not sure what could have hurt him. He is now sitting in the corner of the tank facing outward and strangely enough if you walk up to him (or even tap the glass) he doesnt retreat into his shell like the others do. We dropped some pellet food in front of him and he ate like mad. His decline seems to have happened recently. The only thing that has changed is one of our 2 bulbs burnt out a few weeks ago and we havent been able to replace it.
Is it possible that we have an element issue? I know they need certain elements to rebuild their shells when they molt. I am going to try and test the water tonight and ill post the results. In the meantime I was wondering if anyone had any thoughts.
 
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