Cannibal Blue Leg hermit

[ClaireFB]

One of my ble leg hemit moulted then went back into his shell. A bigger blue leg hermit then proceeded to pull off one of the poor little fellow's legs (he was still alive at this point), before eating him. My (very nosey) cleaner shrimp was hovering around all the while, and now the whole clean up crew is having a go. Is it normal for a hermit to attack one of his own like this. Does anyone know? All info appreciated.

[imlocke]

One of my ble leg hemit moulted then went back into his shell. A bigger blue leg hermit then proceeded to pull off one of the poor little fellow's legs (he was still alive at this point), before eating him. My (very nosey) cleaner shrimp was hovering around all the while, and now the whole clean up crew is having a go. Is it normal for a hermit to attack one of his own like this. Does anyone know? All info appreciated.

 

yea, they kill each other for their shells usually, but they will fight/kill each other sometimes.

[ClaireFB]

yea, they kill each other for their shells usually, but they will fight/kill each other sometimes.

Is there any way I can avoid this happening again?

[newowner]

I was told to have a lot of extra empty shells on the bottom of the tank to allow them to select new ones. Nobody has touched those shells except Benny, my bicolor benny that has made one of his many home in one of them. The other shells are collecting sand that my Mandaren Dragonet is moving into and one of my gobies until it commited suicide into my filter compartment.

 

 

However, I am having something that nobody seems to believe. I have a mixture of red legged crabs and blue legged crabs. The red legged crabs are all about twice the size of the blue legged ones at least. Well, I am seeing a lot of little red crab legs floating around my tank and a lot of little blue crabs now in big shells that used to belong to the red crabs. I think the little crabs are killing my big crabs - the people at my fish store said there is no way that those little crabs are killing the bigger ones, however I have lost all but 2 red crabs, and I have not lost a single blue crab that I can tell.

[snow_white_0]

Last week my blue leg hermit killed my scarlet reef crab and stole its shell. I found him in the scarlett's shell and the dead crab beside his old shell. There was other shells available-- guess he just wanted that one. I have yet to replace the scarlett crab. They were the only two in the tank.

[TheCarTech]

Last week I watched one of my blue legged hermits attack a red one for his shell. The red one got out of his shell and ran away. Then the blue legged one tried on the shell and said screw it and got back into his original shell. The red one didn't come out of hiding so I don't know if he lived.

[shift_9k]

Besides color, whats the diff between blue and red hermits?

[Matty1124]

blues are more aggressive... lots of people dont like to keep them for this reason... reds are more mild tempered but dont do a whole lot...

[johnsredline]

yea, ive had them same problem with my two blue legs, theyve killed a few of my other hermits that are alot bigger then them. i thought they were killing for the shells, so i got a few empty shells for them. but they still kill the other hermits for no apparent reason.