Hermit deaths

[skeeter]

I seem to be having a bit of a hermit crab problem. Within the last 2 days I have had 4 hermit crabs show up dead out of there shells on the bottom of the tank. I have checked the vitals and I have zero ammonia, zero Nitrite and only about .25 Nitrate. PH has been stable at 8.3 and salinity has been stable at 1.023 I have also been missing a cleaner wrasse that has not shown himself in about 3 days either. The very day before he was fine eating and swimming, then nothing. The tank is a 125 with 200 lbs of sand about 50lbs of which was live sand. It has about 150lbs of live rock and water quality has been perfect all equipment is running, I checked the skimmer and all is fine there as well. I have been keeping the temp at 77 degrees, checked the temp each morning and it may drop a degree over night, but is always between 76-77 degrees. Please help, I am worried that this may become an epidemic throughout my tank.

[turkeh]

Are you sure they died? Did they just molt(shed)?

[skeeter]

Well, looking at the carcuss it has full color and seems to be an intire body. I havent removed them from the tank, due to 3 of them disappeared by the time I got home from work??? I wonder if something ate them afterwards???

[turkeh]

The molts retain color. I was worried the first time also. It looks exactly like the crab with only a "skin" for the body. I would wait and see if you find them.

[Randy V]

Molts have the normally visible part of the crab (head and legs) but they lack the white "body". If the crabs are dead but not eaten then you may have one or more hermits looking for shell upgrades. Even having extra shells of various sizes will not always prevent this, as hermits will kill another animal if they prefer that particular shell IME. Just an idea.

[Edited by Randy V on 05-16-2001 at 03:36 PM]

[skeeter]

I will check the crabs out when I get home tonight. The ones I saw this morning were all different sized crabs. One big and 2 smaller. However, I did not see there shells anywhere, maybe they did just molt and craw back into the shell and left. I dont know, will have to see. The other thing I have been conserned about is my Cleaner Wrasse. He has just disappeared. No sign of him in days. I have a complete glass top on the tank, so no way he got out. I also checked all over the tank, without moving the rock, no sign of him. Does anyone have any experience with these and is it common for them to take a vacation from time to time???