Hurt Yellow Watchman Goby

[mcarroll]

On 8/10/2020 at 10:31 PM, NicoB0817 said:

I've got no idea why my hermit crabs have done this, the tank is literally having a giant algae bloom and I've been feeding them enough food, but they'd rather kill my snails... Anyone got any idea on why this is happening?

Like anything they're trying to survive – nothing more or less than that – and there are too many in the tank for the available food supply.

 

On 8/10/2020 at 10:59 PM, NicoB0817 said:

They flipped and ate over 10 snails in a week, not even taking there shell, and some of them just minutes after we got them.

 

Snails were probably starving, so like the goby the hermits saw them as "borderline" and took them down.

 

Supposedly hermits and nassarius snails occupy the same niche in the wild and both are carnivorous scavengers.  Job done!!  

 

On 8/10/2020 at 10:31 PM, NicoB0817 said:

I've got no idea why my hermit crabs have done this, the tank is literally having a giant algae bloom and I've been feeding them enough food, but they'd rather kill my snails... Anyone got any idea on why this is happening?

Pics or that bloom isn't happening.  😉

 

Sounds like the algae is probably really long, so the little critters like snails and hermits can no longer eat it.  You have to pull that stuff out by hand, then the herbivores (ditch hermits in favor of more turbo/trochus/Cerith/etc) will keep it clean going forward.  You need a balance between the algae and the herbivores though....you DO NOT want too many snails or they'll slowly starve each other out.