PANZERWELTEN-FORUM

Today one of my two gq made a really bad molting.
She lost four legs, two of each side and her right claw.

What could be the reason? This is the first molt I've had at my gq, and I have no idea what went wrong.
To low humidity? To cold or warm? wrong habitat?
Today the go at coconutfibre, rainsystem keeps a constant high humidity.
They eats a varied diet of fruits, shrimps, and fish.
They show no interest at all for the cutlebone.
The temperature is like 26 during days and 21 during nights.
The seems to be pleased so...

I've had C. armatum for like ten years and have hade like 35-40 moltings of them, and the "accidents" I've had with them during molting is one lost leg and a drowning.

Ofcourse they are very different spieces with different needs, but still...

Any ideas what went wrong now? I really don't want this to happen again because of my faults, and as I guess it's time for the other one pretty soon I really wants to give the best conditions as soon as possible.

could u tell us more about your terrarium ? maabe some pictures ?
did u set some new plants in, lately ?

Sometimes (most of the times to be honest) we just don't know. Since You say You kept a Cardisoma for some ten years You surely have some basic skills in crab keeping and know how they live. In nature molt problems are usually death cause number one or two (behind getting caught by a predator).

Low humidity might be a cause, yes. As might be missing minerals or vitamins or who knows what. Your crab still lives, itÄs just lost some limbs, which is not nice for the crab but no real problem – especially in captivity where it has no problems in finding food and must not flee any predators. There are many reasons why a molt does not work 100% okay but we don't even know them all.

Ideas what went wrong? Well, how does Your crab live? Describe the tank, how do You treat fruits (which ones) before feeding, what kind of setup is it, HOW humid is it and and and? To maybe find an answer we'd have to know a lot more facts.

The tank setup right now is a 112litre. Like 12-15 cm of coconut fibre.
I had 2/3 coconut and 1/3 sand before, but they didn't wanted to be in the sand at all.
I've tried diferent plants, but the bigger one of them just destroys them completly. No eating of them, just destroying.
So... No plants last 3 month.
Pretty boring actually.. But the big one destroys what ever i put in the tank. (It's she who molted now)
Ofcourse they are having hideouts. Some pots and wide roots. The pots seems to be favorite.
I have a rainsystem that gives rain once a day. It's set to give as much rain it can but still giving no free water under the coconutfibres.
No % numbers of the humidity, but its high.
They eat more or less everything. I have never treated fruits in any way more than cleaning them under fresh water.
Apples, papaya, mango, bananas, lettuce, cucumber.
Shrimps.
They like hunting live fish in a bowl of water.
They show no interest in pellets.
They are having a limbstone, but I've never seen them eat from it.
Sorry for no pictures now, but my camera died some weeks ago.

(Wednesday, 4. July 2012, 1:36)pinoccio schrieb: [ -> ]No % numbers of the humidity, but its high.

Hm, "high" of course is. ahm, relative.

Zitat:I have never treated fruits in any way more than cleaning them under fresh water.
Apples, papaya, mango, bananas, lettuce, cucumber.
Shrimps.

Okay, Maybe (!) here we have something. PLEASE peel every fruit the get. Especially "bio" food which is often prepared with copper (which is harmless for vertebrates but toxic for invertebrates).

Please read the english food list: http://www.panzerwelten.de/forum/thread-1453.html


Best wishes, Ollie

Ok, things are not getting better here...
Sorry for no pics yet, but I´ve got the same setup as earlier except for a fern plant.
(I think it´s translated to "fern", used google translate)
The fern Is the first plant that haven´t been destroyed, but they climb and hide in it.
The moisture keeps a constant of at least 80%.
Temperature is 27 during days and 23 at nights.
I´ve been very accurate how I treat the food before feeding.

Now to the sad part....
The big one now with just 4 legs and 1 claw since the bad molt, eats well and seems to be very pleased. She hides a lot, but I guess it is because she is so truncated now.
The smaller one stoped eating, lost some colour and seemed to prepare a molt.
Came home from my job and found her dead in her pot. The shell was a bit open in the rear, and she had actually a small hole in the middle of her back. The new fine "shell" was easy to see through it.

WHAT AM I DOING WRONG!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

My cardisomas lives, eats, molts and so with absolutly no problems.
My frogs works fine.
My malawi cichlids works fine.
My gecko works fine.
Problems with all of my earlier animals have always been solved.
Why am I not succeed with my Gecarcinus????? I really can´t understand what I´m doing wrong.

My thoughts is that they still are to dry and therfore haven´t softened the shell properly before molt.
The small one seemed to have been properly developed under the old shell, but seems to have been stuck in it.
The big one had proper lims developed in the old shell even though she lost it during her molt.
As the cardisomas more or less lives under water before molt to soften up, I gave the gecarcinus a small pool deep enough to submerge completely. None of them showed any interest at all for the pool.

hey pinoccio.

sad to hear, im really sorry for you and your crab, BUT it might be nature works. i had two big gq which died both in bad moltings (couldnt get out of their shells). now i keep two gq for 2 years without problems...one lost a leg in a molting but grew it back, so maybe its just not in your hand. its hard, i know, but i guess you have to accept that thats how nature works.
i am really sorry for you loss...

Maybe you are right....
How do you keep yours?
Here in Sweden very few keeps them, so there is no one to ask.
Read the facts here about them, and it says nothing about humidity.
I have been having at least 80%.
I guess the humidity is a pretty important factor for softening the shell, or am I wrong?
If I google them, I see some keeps them like mine at only coconutfibre.
Some keeps them at sand with a beach, just like I keep my cardisomas.
Some got big and nice aquaterrariums with waterfall and so.
The variations seems to be many, but what seems to work best?
My expectations was that they should bury down in the moist substrate before molt and keep there until it was time for molting.
Ok, they are digging holes but they don´t stay in them.
My CA I know so well that I easily see when its time for molt.
But what´s the normal behaviour before molt for GQ?
I have had them for 8 month when the bigger one molted and lost some lims (She is 5cm carapace) and the small one who died now after 11 month and no earlier molt here. (She was 3,8cm carapace)
Isn´t this way to long between the moltings for a crab that small?
They were eating well and so.
My CA molts like every 4 month, and they are now 5cm carapace.

hey,
well gq dont need water, i saw tanks with waterfalls etc too, but they are not needed. my tank is just filled with humus and sand mixed with some stones etc. my gq are nearly all the time hidden in their holes...they only come out at nights. as i see them seldom i cant really tell how often they molted, but the male i have for 2 years now and he only molted once in that time. i think you cant really tell how often a crab should/will molt. if they are younger they molt more often and the rythm gets slower with age...
maybe your gq molt slower as they dont grow as big as ca. i dont really control the humidity, i just try to keep the humus wet. important is that your gq have a calcium (sepia or something like that).

I think you are right.

About the molting cycles I only have the cardisomas to compare with, so...
What I can see, you and me are having more or less the same setup.
As it seems to work for you, I´ll try the same again with the one I have left and the new one I ordered now.

About the thing you wrote that they hide during days, mine are having sunset from one of my aquariums standing beside.
The T5 tubes are getting out at the same time to the crabs and the fishes, then the sunset of LED-lights fading down in the fishtank for an hour.
This gives a lot of fun to see with the crabs who works alot during that hour, then cooling down and are calmer during night.
So, the absolute best times to study my gq have been during sunrise and sunset.
I tryed the same with my CA, but they didn´t care at all.

Thank you for helping me in english.
I´ve tried google translate for the rest of the forum, but it doesn´t work so well.
I´m pretty sure I miss a lot of good info because of that.

(Sunday, 16. September 2012, 22:44)pinoccio schrieb: [ -> ]WHAT AM I DOING WRONG!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Maybe nothing!

Sometimes these animals have damages from import we can't see and sometimes a successful molting seems to be a bit lucky too. The circumstances have to be correct too of course. But luck seems to play a role too.

Sometimes this is really sad – and it is sad not only for You, it is sad for everyone of us. With some species one has luck, with others it doesn't work out, often we don't know why.

Only thing I'm not sure of is if you peel the vegetables now. In the peel pollutants accumulate, it has to be peeled always!

no problem pinoccio, if you have more questions feel free to ask.
the forum is here to help ....

you know, i had for the gq male, i keep for 2 years now, two girls... one suddenly was "disappeared"... i think she died while molting and he ate the rests...i only found her carapax. the second girl just suddenly died, she sat in the tank, froze and died. i have no idea from what. its always hard on the keeper, but you seldom get the answers for the "why?". you only can be carefull with the food you feed and take care of the surroudings, what you already do.
the actual couple i keep goes well together for like 1 year now ....

Thank you for your help both of you!
Now it´s just to wait here. The new one arrives in about 2 weeks.
Just to hope for better luck this time.

where can you get crabs in sweden? did you order it in another country?

have confidence...you do what you can for the animal, so its good
if you need a translation on here or something else, let me know ...

I have the luck my brother got some nice odd fishes, have breeded a lot of snakes and have a lot of good contacts. To that I have like 300 meters to the biggest specialized fish-store in Sweden. (When I order things from them, it stands "the crabman" at the things, not my name)

My cardisomas came via them from Glaser.
My GQ came from one of my brothers fish-contacts, and the ordered one are coming from one of his snake-contact, who also runs a petshop. (I know they are coming from Germany somewere.)

How "normal" people should find a crab here.... I don´t know actually.
Sometimes (not often) you see small cardisomas for sale, beeing sold from petstores meant to hold with fishes in just water. Sad, but true....
Since Hornbach opened markets here, you can find some small aquatic crabs, but the sellers never know anyting about them.
My first CA, we got just by a coincedence many years ago, and that´s where it started with crabs for me.

Since I seperated from my sons mother I´ve got free space for my animals and my other hobby, wooden boats.
Today I´m keeping my 2 CA, my GQ, (that will be at least one more next week.) A 375 liter aquarium with Malawi cichlides, an aquarium with fry, 2 xenopus laevis (clawfrogs) and an aquarium with Guppys and som siamensis. (My sons thou)

The plan is to sell the frogs, feed away the guppys, make som space for 2 new tanks for crabs. (I want at least 1 with aquatic crabs) And a bigger tank with some funny monsterfishes for my son.
He´s so up to my brothers channas, the catfish and his gar. He also wants spidercrabs. Mmmmmm.... Daddys son!!!!!

Once again, thank you! As I wrote, it is sometimes hard to translate,....

Must be tough on you, I lost a very very prized specimen just yesterday. A large female Nanhaipotamon zhuhaiense, new species, critically endangered in the wild. I had planned to release her crabblings back into the wild in the future... She was stuck during the molting process...

chaohuang: Sad to hear!!!! Looked at your other thread earlier and saw the pictures. What a beautiful crab!!!
Where did she come from???

Yeah, that's sad. Maybe next time it works better?!

(Sunday, 4. November 2012, 23:28)pinoccio schrieb: [ -> ]chaohuang: Sad to hear!!!! Looked at your other thread earlier and saw the pictures. What a beautiful crab!!!
Where did she come from???

Thanks! It's from Zhuhai, South China.