Question
for the past week i've had problems with my hermit crab trying to "escape" from his box, with success, i might add. he had been very active and then yesterday i looked in on him and he was out of the shell and looked dead. is he dead or just molting? i've enclosed a picture of what he looks like.
AnswerYour crab is in distress. Hermit crabs require a very specific environment to live for any length of time. They need a habitat with temperature and humidity between 74 and 82. They need substrate deep enough to bury themselves in and they need dechlorinated fresh and ocean style salt water in pools deep enough for them to get the water into their shells.
The cardboard box you have is not an adequate enclosure. It will quickly mold and hermit crabs are very capable of picking apart cardboard until it is shredded.
If your crab smells fishy then he is dead, molting crabs rarely leave their shells in this way.
