Stress and answer to crab's death?

[lioness101]

This weekend my family and I went to the beach(I live in southern alabama) and played with a few of the hermit crabs. After my parents argued about if for a while, my mom told me that we had decided to keep 4 small hermit crabs. So, we put them in a play bucket with an extra shell, some sea water and sand. Once we got home about an hour later, my family and I went into the living room for a few minutes. When I came out to check and the hermit crabs, one of them was out of the bucket and on the table, with my kitten next to it looking very hungry. I picked him up and he appeared fine. Yesterday morining my mother and I went to the pet store and bought a real plastic tank, sand, 2 water dishes, food and a sponge. We threw everything together and quickly put all 5(we found a hermie at the bottom of the bucket!) crabs in the tank. A few hours later I looked in on the crabs to find the one my cat threw around out of his shell. I picket up him and his shell with a spoon and put them in a small plastic dish. A moment later I found him dead. A few hours later two more crabs died after showing no signs and not falling out of their shells. This morning I found the last two dead, but still in their shells.

Was the stress the cause of this? I know that ALL crabs are caught from the beach, so I don't think that was the problem. They were all about the size of a dime. Where they too young?

[iluvhermies]

It could have been stress. There is not a lot known why thing happen to the hermies. They had food and decholrinized water? They had sand. What was the temp and humidity?

[Wai]

Are you sure that they are dead? Did you try to tug them out of their shells to check?

[HermieLove19]

most of the time crabs fall completely out of the shell when they're dead. that's so strange that they all just died like that.

[hermiesrokmysox]

just curious (i know this i an old post) but like iluvhermies said, what are/were the tank conditions?

[PhoEniX212]

Hm, maybe the stress got to them? I know originally crabs would have come from the beach, but I daresay pet store ones come from some sort of breeder/breeding centre or something (well, the ones round here would)