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Killer Hermit Crabs?


Wjcastiglione

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Wjcastiglione

My buddy has a 29g bio cube - he has 4-6 hermit crabs inside of it, one large one named "clink" because the way he constantly does laps around the tank and clinks his shell against the glass constantly...

 

This thing is large.. I mean - I'm a newb to this SW scene - but it's bigger than any hermit I've ever seen in a LFS.

 

My buddy put in a turbo snail the other day - and it immediately attacked the turbo snail because he wanted his shell. My buddy seperated them two or three times - he woke up the next morning - and clink was inside of the turbo's shell - and eating the snail.

 

In addition - he added a brand new ruby red scooter blenny the other day - and one of the other hermits ate this lil guy!

 

Does anyone else have experiences like this? should he pull these bad boys out?!

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Dwarf hermits are 100% safe - If they aren't the "dwarf" type of hermits, they can get very, very large and really shouldn't be in your reef (with a few exceptions). Just go to any boardwalk on the east or west coast and look at all the places selling hermit crabs - they can get to be the size of your fist, or bigger and live for years.

 

Dwarf blue legged, red legged, zebra, etc. hermits don't get bigger than an inch or so and while they will kill snails or other, smaller hermits, for their shells - they aren't going to kill a fish. I seriously, seriously doubt your friends hermit killed the fish - hermits WILL devour already-dead fish and corals and that is what gives them a bad repuation (they are opportunistic scavengers).

 

As for how strong they are, this is a 3 year old inch long hermit in a very large cerith - so much for how tough and dangerous they are to your reef life:

hermit_feast_side.jpg

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CatfishSoupFTW

my hermit crabs sometimes kill each other for their shells. I added extra ones for them to swap, but if they like it - they like it.

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Wjcastiglione

Dwarf hermits are 100% safe - If they aren't the "dwarf" type of hermits, they can get very, very large and really shouldn't be in your reef (with a few exceptions). Just go to any boardwalk on the east or west coast and look at all the places selling hermit crabs - they can get to be the size of your fist, or bigger and live for years.

 

Dwarf blue legged, red legged, zebra, etc. hermits don't get bigger than an inch or so and while they will kill snails or other, smaller hermits, for their shells - they aren't going to kill a fish. I seriously, seriously doubt your friends hermit killed the fish - hermits WILL devour already-dead fish and corals and that is what gives them a bad repuation (they are opportunistic scavengers).

 

As for how strong they are, this is a 3 year old inch long hermit in a very large cerith - so much for how tough and dangerous they are to your reef life:

hermit_feast_side.jpg

 

He said he had some issues with him acclimating - but he was fine and lightly swimming around the bottom. You think it's more probable that the fish died on its own and the hermit just ate him when he died?

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Any hermit crab with a documented adult body size of over 1.5" is pretty much a serial-killer-in-waiting as far as I've experienced. But I have a LOT of dwarf hermits in my tank, and aside from the occasional loss of a cerith or shell-swap fatality they get along well with just about everything.

 

The good thing is that there is NEVER leftover food rotting in the tank. I gave up testing for any nitrate cycle products other than an "I'm feeling paranoid" ammonia check every month or two. Does make keeping decorative macroalgae bit of a challenge... the search for specimens that look nice, grows well but isn't overly invasive & isn't too palatable or it's gone within a week makes for vary rarefied stocking list. ;)

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He said he had some issues with him acclimating - but he was fine and lightly swimming around the bottom. You think it's more probable that the fish died on its own and the hermit just ate him when he died?

 

100% Yes - every single time a fish dies, if you have hermit crabs, they will eat the dead fish. That is what they do - they scavenge for dead and decaying things. That is why they are so awesome - they will eat anything dead or dying and prevent it from fouling up your tank.

 

There is absolutely no way a dwarf hermit crab (or even a little larger one like a halloween hermit) is going to take down a healthy fish - even one as small as a juvenile scooter dragonet - or even one smaller than that like a clown goby. Dragonets are notoriously hard to keep in small tanks - especially new tanks since they only eat live pods until they are specifically trained to eat frozen (if you can even get that to happen... it isn't guaranteed). If the dragonet was starved before he got it, and he couldn't get it to eat, or what he called "acclimitization probems", the crabs were just feasting on his dead fish.

 

Hermit crabs are just an easy scapegoat for poor husbandry skills or poor livestock selection since everything that dies has crabs eating it. Nassarius snails do the same thing as crabs (just not as well), but people never say "my snail killed my fish".

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Hermit crabs are just an easy scapegoat for poor husbandry skills or poor livestock selection since everything that dies has crabs eating it. Nassarius snails do the same thing as crabs (just not as well), but people never say "my snail killed my fish".

 

Unless you keep Conus snails.

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