Do hermit crabs molt

Answer 1

possibly, but most likely no. the outside should crumble/break/crack, allowing it to come out.

Another view: Your pet hermit crab should molt under the substrate (sand, or Eco Earth, NOT calci sand, which hardens like a rock when it gets wet and dries, never use as a substrate. put in their food dish instead). There are occasions when the hermit crab will surface molt, but this is not normal. Most often there is not appropriate substrate available (as in having only gravel, which is NOT hermit crab friendly, they need sand) or the crab is unduly stressed. There are some videos of hermit crabs surface molting on YouTube, if you are curious, do a search and watch those.

A hermit crab should never be disturbed when it is molting, never ever dig up a burrowed hermit crab. Molting can take a couple of weeks up to several months. Just keep the tank temperature and humidity in proper hermit crab ranges, change out the food and water dishes regularly, and leave them alone. They need darkness to trigger the molting hormone. Molting is their most fragile time, and they can easily die if stressed or disturbed too much during molting.

For more info, visit http://www.hermit-crabs.com or http://www.hermitcrabparadise.com and click on the care sheets link, and scroll down to molting.

Answer 2

Well you should leave your Hermit Crab for 4 - 6 weeks until its skeloton hardens.

If you touch it when its skeloton isn't hard there is a BIG posability of it dying. You don't want that now.

Answer 3

Fisrt of all, that has happened because you need to have coconut fiber or sand substrate that needs to be deeper that your biggest hermie. Sorry, but most hermies die when they do that because of the stress, and another hermie might eat them.

Hermit crabs come out of their shell to molt, and you need to keep other hermies away from it, dont touch it, because you will stress it out and might kill it. Its best to watch to see what happens because its too late for the substrate. Hermit crabs go underground for months to molt. Hope this helped!

Answer 4

Though we try to keep it to a minimum it does happen. The best coarse of action is to avoid doing it again and to provide a safe place for the crab to molt if they are not underground.

Answer 5

Hermit crabs molt their forward and claw shells up to a certain size -- their abdomens never form any sort of shell.

Answer 6

I Really Don't Know. My Sister's Hermit Crab molted for about 2 weeks and when he came out from under my coral, he didn't go to the shells that we had at all. Weird Alright. I'm a Boy

Answer 7

You should just leave the crab alone because molting is very stressful for a hermit crab.