Out of Shell but very active

[faerie.hearts]

Hi,

I currently have a purple pincer hermie that has spent the past day either changing shells or being without one. I woke up this morning to find him changing into a bigger shell and thought nothing of it until I noticed him checking out the other shells, as the one he picked first ended up being too big. But no big deal, there’s 10+ shells in there and I figured he’d find one. He eventually switched into a conch shell that seemed to fit.

Well now as I was passing the tank, I noticed the shell he had changed into was now empty in his water pool so I began searching for him, since it didn’t seem like he had put himself into a different shell. Well it took a few minutes to find him, but he’s currently climbing behind his climbing wall…without a shell.

So now I’m not sure what to do. His behavior (aside from missing his shell) is normal. His humidity is at 85% and the temp is at 80. He has fresh food and like I’ve mentioned, plenty of shells. But unfortunately none of the turbo shells fit him, only a conch. Could that be the problem? I’ve had him for about 5 years so it’s not like he’s new to the tank. I also don’t want to touch him since he’s on the climbing wall and I don’t want him to panic and accidentally fall into his water pool, especially without a shell.

Truly any advice would be amazing, I know they need to be shelled asap but if it’s a shell issue unfortunately he’s going to have to wait until morning

[Wai]

You will need to source more viable spare shells for him. I would also suggest cleaning out his last shell in case anything prickly is inside.

[faerie.hearts]

Thank you, for now it seems like he’s decided to go to his original shell that he was in before he started to look into other ones. I wasn’t able to find any shells in the few stores that I went to today so I’ll have to order some. I’m hoping he won’t abandon ship(shell) again until the new shells are here. I worried so much last night that I kept waking up like every two hours to see if he had put a shell on

[Carrie]

Glad your crab is back in its shell!