Who's the culprit?

[TangingOut]

Looking inside my tank tonight, I notice some dangling legs on the sand bed. Looks like they belonged to my electric blue hermit I added a few days ago or the one that was already in there. I thought that I had put together a pretty peaceful and effective cleaning crew. I believe these are the main suspects, an arrow crab, 5 peppermint shrimps, and a scarlet cleaner shrimp who was near by at the time of discovery.

 

[Titans_Reef]

Maybe it just died. Peppermint shrimps and scarlet cleaner shrimps dont go after hermits in my experience. I had my electric blue hermit banished into my refugium since it ate my wifes black ray shrimp goby. I then added 2 cleaner shrimps that was a pair from a guy on craigslist into the refugium that I got for $20 for both. They lived alone with eachother for a while until my fuge decided to get no flow while I was on vacation which my friend didnt know how my fuge was set up since he was taking care of it and the shrimps died. (My fuge is a 20g long tank connected to my sump and the water is pumped into it from the first chamber of the sump) Maybe since you said you had one already in there, one probably wanted the others shell and killed it. My electric blue is aggressive which im getting nerites for my new 40g breeder since its in a 3" turbo shell right now and is the reason why I do not have any turbos in my 125g tank. It started off small but now its huge and keeps changing shells every day.

 

[TangingOut]

Hmmm, didn't think about them fighting over shells. I have a few empty shell in there, but they're all small and for the smaller reef hermits. Maybe I should add a few bigger ones. There's at let one big empty shell now. lol

 

[Sugar Magnolia]

It may have just been a molt.

 

[snorvich]

It may have just been a molt.

That would be my guess.

 

[TangingOut]

It may have just been a molt.

I found 4 legs still attached to some meaty flesh, and when I removed it to inspect it felt solid. I've never encountered a molted shell though so that's still a possibility.

 

[Calappidae]

If something attacked him there wouldn't be remains.

Other hermit crabs on the other hand will rip each other right out of their shells.

 

[Noah 123]

If it wasn't a molt, the highest possible suspect would be the arrow crab. I've seen one reach it's long claw into a hermit crab shell and rip out the hermit.