Help! Camel shrimp just molted and now it's laying upside down

[jdircksen]

My camel shrimp just decided to mold, and right after it came out of it's skin, it was lifeless and just floated with the current. I turned off the flow and now it's laying on its back/side. It twitches it's legs every few minutes and it's tongue thing is still running a mile a minute.

Is this the normal response to molting? Or is he kicking the bucket?

My lights have been on for the past 7 hours and still have another 3 to go. Tank was been set up for 9 months. Only loss of life was a pepermint shrimp about a month ago. I got the camelback after the pepermint died.

Any ideas?

[jgoodrich71]

Just leave him alone and give him a couple of days. How much would you move around if you didn't have a skeleton? Just keep an eye on him. His "shell" should become rigid in a few days and everything should be normal.

[jdircksen]

He has molted atleast 4 times before, but never in plain view like this. It's totally new to me. He's still on his side and kicking.

[bertoni]

Sometimes animals die during a molt, even in nature. There's not much you can do except hope for the best.

[stix_55]

Side track abit. But what do we do with the molted shell? Remove it?

[boilermaker1]

Leave it. They tend to dissapear on their own.... a lot of them utilize the old shell as a source of iodine.

[MDboyz]

I always feed it to my anemone. Anyway, shrimp does need iodine to molt tho. Make sure you add iodine... once for awhile...

[bertoni]

Actually, shrimp don't seem to need any iodine from the water column to molt. They do tend to excrete it into their shells. That's because it's a toxin to them. The invertebrate forum has a lot of information on this topic.