Zebra hermit with a clam under its shell?

[panzz]

Hi everyone, I noticed something unusual with both of my zebra hermit crabs recently. 

 

The shells they are using now started becoming thicker on the bottom, I know, how's that possible? But it is! it started becoming thicker and whiter, almost like new calcified materials were forming. It got to the point that I can no longer lie to myself that it is not happening, so upon closer inspection I noticed it was a clam. Or something like a clam. On BOTH the hermits (how about that?).

 

Here is a video of me poking it with a pipette, it closed. And the later video showing it open. 

 

Can someone help me here, is this naturally occurring? I can't find any information from Google searching though. Or it could be something very common and you are laughing at my lack of knowledge on this 😅

 

Please remember both hermit crabs have this "clam" under them.

 

Sorry about the low quality, trying to keep within the 25 MB limit. 

 

 

 

[Tired]

That sure looks like a clam. It's weird that it would be on both shells, but certainly not unheard of- all kinds of things can colonize shells. Coincidence is a funny thing, and maybe the crabs are from somewhere that recently had a lot of baby clams waiting to settle. Just be sure your hermits have lots of empty shells to change into, and when they do change out of those, put them where the clams will be able to filter-feed. 

[panzz]

27 minutes ago, Tired said:

That sure looks like a clam. It's weird that it would be on both shells, but certainly not unheard of- all kinds of things can colonize shells. Coincidence is a funny thing, and maybe the crabs are from somewhere that recently had a lot of baby clams waiting to settle. Just be sure your hermits have lots of empty shells to change into, and when they do change out of those, put them where the clams will be able to filter-feed. 

Yeah they came from the same tank in my LFS, so that is very likely where the eggs were from. Will take note of getting those empty shells soon, currently still on lockdown from where I am. All LFS are shut at the moment. 

[Tired]

Clams don't really tend to spawn in captivity, and those are much older than newly settled clams anyway. I meant the place they were collected out of the wild might have had a lot of loose clams. 

 

You can order empty shells online, and will probably want to do that soon. Hermits can suffer if not provided with enough empty shells, they need to molt regularly and grow with those molts.