[sgarron]

Saw 1 of my electric blues lying dead between 2 rocks. Took it out and put his shell on the sand as a decoration. 2 minutes later the shell was on the other side of the tank. I looked inside and saw another electric blue crab. Has anyone seen this before?

[rlcline76]

Are you sure he was dead and did not molt?

[sgarron]

I don't think a molt would have bright blue bands on the legs, would it? It was a full set of legs and claws with very little of a body.

[rlcline76]

Molts can retain color. Could also be that the hermit died and a different hermit took its shell.

[NATIVEVAMAN]

Hermit crabs often change shells and sometimes fight over them.And when they fight over the shell guess what the winner gets for dinner.

[sgarron]

Only have 2 in the tank. I guess either a molt or a freak of nature.

[rlcline76]

Right, kinky hermit crabs. Well if what you saw was actually a dead body, I guess it is too late to have that "1 crab, 1 shell" talk.

[Cela Vie]

Originally Posted by NATIVEVAMAN

Hermit crabs often change shells and sometimes fight over them.And when they fight over the shell guess what the winner gets for dinner.

Filet Mignon?

[cappy290]

When my hermits molt it looks like the real thing the color is all there and everything, it fooled me once or twice already. Has anyone ever had a hermit crab kill one of your nassarius snails and take the shell over? I had one do this and I tell u this hermit looks like a freak of nature hes so darn big like 5 or 10 times bigger than all the rest of the hermit crabs.

[glampka]

I bought a CUC for the cubes. Darn (politically correct-keeping with the G-rating) crabs were killing off the snails for the shells. Wife got all upset calling them murderers!!!

[NATIVEVAMAN]

My sweety and I had a tank of the big saltwater hermit crabs for a year. We returned the survivors to the wild in june.Some of them were in shells that weighed 3 ounces or more.We put an extra shell in the tank for each crab.And they would still kill each other for a shell.I am convinced that it was not that they needed a larger shell,but that they just liked the other shell better.we put a total of 19 crabs in the tank and released 7 to the wild and we lost none to disease or bad water.They simply killed each other.