Conerned: Thought my hermie was dead

[mst_mugen]

Hey all,

This morning i woke up to find my giant strawberry hermie in the position shown in the picture below. I walked up to the glass to have a closer look and to my surprise, the hermie didnt move at all. Usually when i come up close to the tank it retreats back into its shell. Because it didnt move at all, i started to lightly tap the glass infront of it, and again it didnt move at all (its antenna's were completely still as well).... i immediately thought the worse and stood there to stare at my hermie for the next 10 mins and still, absolutely no movement. I checked on my hermie 3 hrs later and it was still in the same position and just like before, it wouldnt move at all even though i was lightly tapping the glass to see if it would respond. However, i came back 1 hr later to find that my hermie had moved which meant it was still alive! i was really relieved to see that it had moved =) its moving around fine right now as if nothing happened.

I would like to add that 3/4 of my tank is sand and the other 1/4 is shell grit. My tank is a 2 footer n around 1 foot wide.

My question is, is my hermie on its way out??? or perhaps is it ready to molt? im aware of the signs of molting and my hermie hasnt really shown any of them. Any help would be muchly appreciated. Thank you.

[CrabbyJo]

My hermies have done that twice! I was so concerned, I walked up to see a PP in that odd position, and he wouldn't respond to the light tapping either. Not even an antennae wiggle. I don't remember how long he was like that, it was a good amount of time, though not three hours like yours. Then I saw him get up, and I realized he had his "face" planted down in the Eco Earth. He moved his antennae and legs around normally as if nothing were amiss, then he took his claws, sort of "scooted" the soil out a little bit, and planted his "face" down in the soil again, in very much the position your crab appears to be in. I wonder, are they "licking" the substrate? Lol.
All I could think is he is using his mouthparts to get something (water?) out of the soil (in my case).

I just saw another hermie in that position two days ago too.

So - I wouldn't worry, but I'd ask around, see if others have observed this and might have a good idea of what their crabs are up to.

Wierd, huh? And to be so engrossed in whatever it was that they didn't respond to tapping, even though they would normally I think.

[mst_mugen]

haha.... thank you very much for ur response i was getting very worried... as im typing this, my strawberry hermit is doin exactly the same thing as u described, except his doin it in the shell grit.... he did the same thing this morning and i had to move him cuz he dug underneath the water bowl n it got to the point that he was goin to tip over all the water so i had to move him... i thought that if he was goin it cuz his ready to molt, then id move him to the sand area of the tank and hopefuli he'll start digging, but instead he goes straight back next to the water bowl n starts digging underneath it again... but it looks kinda funny how his face is planted down in the shell grit...

hmmm, i wonder y hermit crabs do this???

[CrabbyJo]

Makes you wonder if something yummy yet extremely small is growing in the moist substrate - what I thought it looked like was the crab was maybe sucking water out of the substrate. It could very likely be some fungus or something growing that they like to eat?
Wish I had a microscope and some formal training in microbiology! lol