Happy 4th of July! This past week was full of interesting things. Last week, I mentioned that there was some bad weather that possibly caused some of the males to regress in their molting process and not molt when we thought they would. This past week, we had more males molt again! That was a good sign. We concluded that it was the drastic temperature difference that caused the males to halt their molting for a week or two. The storms brought in a lot of rain and colder weather, which caused a big drop in the temperature; though this past week, the temperature outside was extremely warm-close to 100° some days-so it warmed the water temperature a lot. The water temperature in the tanks went from 18°C to 24.5°C. This is an even bigger change than it may seem because it is in Celsius. It is the equivalent of going from 64.4°F to 76.1°F.
As mentioned above, we have gotten a few more male molts, but we are on the tail end of the male molting season and the female molting season is coming up soon! We have put a few females that are showing the signs we believe indicate it may molt soon in separate containers to track their progress. We have already gotten a few that molted just within a few days of watching it! Hopefully, with the warm weather and as the weeks go by and we get further into the female molting season, we will get even better at predicting when they will molt and will get a lot to molt!
Pictured above: Female green crab being monitored for molting signs
Until next time!
Nicole
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