I gave my hermit crabs one of my old(dead) snails shells......from one of my brigs that had died....

Kermit moved into it yesterday....and was dead this morning!!!!


Disease from the snail still lingering in the shell???

Can snaily diseases hurt other species??

How long ago did the snail die, and what did you use to clean out the shell?

snail died maybe 2 months ago....soaked the shell in vinnegar water to clean it

i'm sorry about kermit. maybe the vinegar was absorbed in the shell and then into kermit and he's body didnt like it too much

I dont knwo about the vinnegar though.

when I got crab mites, I cleaned all of their things with vinnegar water....all the other shells and everything.

THey have been in and out of everything and hes the fisrst to go and I had the mites about 2 or 3 months ago I think

I am not too familiar with snail diseases, my thought was that there was something in the shell that could have caused it. But it seems you washed it correctly, and it was lying around dry for long enough to cure out properly.
Lets see if I can crab somebody with more experience...

In my opinion it is a coincidence. I dont believe any snail disease could kill a crab, especially after so long. Hermies are very good at cleaning things up the way they want. Ive seen them meticulously clean shells, so he wouldnt have moved in unless he liked it.

Now are you ABSOLUTELY sure he was dead and what you were seeing wasnt a molt? That is especially likely since he just moved to a larger shell. You would see the hollow exo hanging out of the shell (which looks very much like a dead crab) and the actual crab would be much smaller, and tucked way back inside the shell.

If the entire body fell out then he would sadly be dead. Also crabs that have died have an unmistakeable rotten odor about them.

he was dead....all of him tumbled out and there was a nice, strong fishy smell radiating from him....

Im really sorry to hear that…sometimes they do just die for no reason, and we never know why. Ive heard of post purchase stress being responsible for deaths many months after the purchase.