hermit crabs

[damdic]

What is the difference between red leg and blue leg?

What are the pros&cons?

[Crakeur]

um, cause I am a dick. Red legs have red legs and blue legs have blue legs.

 

Some will say that one crab will not pick on other inhabitants while others will tell you that all crabs will eventually pick. I have a couple of each in my tank and they don't even seem to go after my sudden algae bloom. to add to the problem with hermits, they drag those shells all over your reef, potentially damaging corals. They will kill snails for the shells, even if they don't use the shell.

 

On the plus side, they are a hoot to watch. They give some movement and watching a tiny crab fall off the top of your reef (the equivalent of a 5 story fall for them) is always good for a laugh or two.

 

Go small when getting the hermits. the bigger they are, the more problems they can cause.

[NaNO ReeFiN]

I just have hermits in my tank for entertainment, cause they don't do sh*t! And they poop a whole lot to! To me, they're all pretty much the same, the blue ones tend to be a little bit more aggressive though..

[MKramer]

More anecdotes... my blue legs actually do a decent amount of work. which is more than I can say about my red-legged. Like the bumblebee snails, the only time they get active is when something else in the tank has died and they smell a snack.

 

My Black and White Hawaiian hermit (Calcinus seurati), though (one of the left-handed varieties of hermit crab) is my most efficient crab. However, in the last month, he's nearly doubled in size, and killed an already almost-dead margarita snail for a larger shell. I worry he's still growing considerably. I won't keep him in there if he gets much larger. Hermits are too clumsy with their shells.

 

Also, as a caveat, be careful about the free use of "red-legged" and "blue-legged" when describing hermits. I can think of three species of each, off the top of my head. Mine in particular are better known as Dwarf Blue-Leg (Clibanarius tricolor) and Mexican Red-Leg (Clibinarius digueti). By Red-Leg, by no means do I mean Scarlet Reef hermits, which are the larger red-legged species with yellow eye stalks. In my opinion, they're lazy, good-for-nothing bums.

[chufa]

I have 3 blues and 2 scarlets. They are all MIA during the day. At night, when I turn the lights off, they go out and party. So my dissapointment is the opposite. I don't ever get to see them properly, but they do a good cleaning job.

[moultonrock]

my 3 blue leggers and 1 red legged hermit have done a ton of work and i've only had them for a week. they've cleaned off the biggest rock in my tank and it was preatty much covered with algae. that's more than I can say about the snails... they haven't done sh@#.

you're right Nano. they do poop a whole lot. it's not lookin to good on the sand. is there anything that will eat sh@#? how do i keep it clean?

[BustytheSnowMaam]

In order of aggressiveness, it seems to be (in my tank) zebras are the most aggressive, followed by the blue-legs and then the red-legs being the most peaceful.

 

I have two zebra hermits and they're pretty obnoxious- they bully the blue-legs and ate my yellow colonial polyps (and left bright-yellow poop as evidence)- as others recommend here I would buy the smallest hermits you can.

 

Tasha

[printerdown01]

I would have to say that my zebras have also been the most aggressive. They also grow REALLY fast! When I get to the meeting here in San Diego on the 21st I'm going to see if anyone wants the little guys! No problems with them killing my snails though!! They are VERY active, I'm just not sure what they are doing... Although they do a terrific job of cleaning up all of the left over foods in the sand.. and have also eaten my snail poop :-D -very happy that this stuff is no longer laying around. I would have to say that so far, my favorite hermit has been the blue leg. They seemed more active than my red legs, but didn't grow as fast as my zebras. I have yet to keep scarlets...

[spoondigity]

I have two blue legs, a red leg, and a scarlet. The blue legs definitely seem most aggressive but all of my hermits work constently (even throughout the day). The four of them in my 10 gallon, have successfully eaten off much of my initial coraline that came on the live rock to my regret. If I had it to do again, I would wait on getting more than 1 hermit so the coraline had a better chance to get started.