Bathing

Question
We recently got 2 crabs, one seemed a bit more active than the other... I bathed both (as the instruction sheet told me to) and the next day one was dead. My son picked him up and he fell half out of his shell... What a traumatic experience! My son, of course blames me for the death by giving him the bath the night before. Now... is bathing good or bad? And what would cause him to die the next day? He was a little less active for the past few days, not eating and mostly out of his shell than in... I hope he was not molting and I tossed him!  :-(

Answer
I'm sorry that you lost your crab. I have kids too and I know how hard that can be to explain. I'll try to do the best I can for you.

With hermit crabs we have something called PPS (Post purchase syndrome). Because of the trauma of capture, storage, and transport, bad conditions and such there is a percentage of crabs that die very shortly after being purchased. It's just the stress sadly.

As for bathing, a quick bath in dechlorinated water when you bring him home shouldn't hurt anything but generally, baths are unnecessary and often stress the crab because it disrupts the saline level in their shell water.

Was your new crab molting? I can't say 100% for sure that he wasn't. I would say it's more likely that he was not. I would know more if you could tell me whether or not his body came out of his shell.

:bighug:

Sorry for your little buddies, both of them!