Blue Hermit Crabs Eat Snails.

[monisa]

Every once in a while, I notice that these Blue Hermits are eating my snails.

They must have eaten at least 20 by now as I have counted.

So are they worth it, you buy astreas and ceriths only to be chomped on by these crabs, are there alternative crabs that wont eat snails but will be effective in eating detritus?

Even worse when these cute blue monsters grow big, they tend to eat snails at a faster rate.

I am beginning to ponder if they are worth the "reef safe" category..

Your thoughts, experiences...

 

[Ashlar]

I've not had much predation from my crabs since I added in 3x their number of empty shells. Then again, I don't use astrea that are too dumb to turn themselves over, either.

 

[DennisF]

The scarlets hermits are not as predatory on snails, but they are more costly. They mainly go after the snails for the shell. Put extra shells in the tank for them.

 

[monisa]

Ashlar, what snails do you use for clean up?

 

[Ashlar]

I've got a few small turbos, a long spine urchin, some nasarrius, and a bunch of those tiny euplica versicolor snails. I actually have one or two astrea left as well, but they don't put a dent in algae the way the urchin and crabs do.

 

[Wes]

ive never had crabs really mess with my snails, but they did love to eat my xenias...as good as they are with algae and such, they had to go...snail only for me

 

[monisa]

I have a few blue hermits that will stay.

I am leaning towards WeMa's "snails only" as I hate the clutter of shells lying around all over my tank to avoid snails being eaten, trying to get neat and stay neat, trying to scrape off all coraline and green algae off my glass so its "CLEAN".

We'll have to see how long that lasts. :lol:

 

[Wes]

and i guess i should remit snail only, i have a few blues as well and a red straggler that i could not evict, and have had no more problems...so i think in small quantities they are ok...

 

[stratman]

@monisa wrote:

I also hate the clutter of snail shells... So i made a spot behind my main LR structure where I keep a pile of shells. When I find the occasional loose shell that 'was' a snail or a crab that upgraded, I throw it in the dump pile by dropping it my special spot.

 

[FranktheTank]

The Blue Leg Hermit is reef safe... but not snail safe. I used to have 10 Blue legs and they destroyed my turbos in a matter of just a couple months. And I had plenty of shells laying around. What really got me was when they started attacking my Scarlet Hermits. So I yanked every blue leg out and went with scarlet hermits only. I later added a new batch of scarlets because several were killed by the blue leg.
After acclimation I dropped them in the tank and out of nowhere came a hidden blue leg and immediately attacked a newly added scarlet!!!

I highly recommend the scarlets! But I understand in people wanting some diversity. Depending your tank size, I would add just a couple blue legs and much more scarlets. I would make sure the blue legs were very small ones that couldn't hurt the scarlet. I added one halloween hermit and a couple hawaiin zebra hermits also.

Blue legs are very aggressive towards other hermits and snails.

 

[fejus]

@FranktheTank wrote:

Frank those Zebras are very aggressive too I got 4 a couple of months ago and my biggest I call "Gigantor" is the resident bully and snail killer for the tank. I swear I have seen him take out 4 of my 9 Snails I have in my tank. My Orange knuckled hermits though are perfectly serene though. I think I am going to take my Zebras in for some store credit, if I can get some, and get a bunch of the scarlets to help with the algae.

-Paul

 

[FranktheTank]

Hey fegus,

When I bought my zebra hermits I got very tiny ones. They weren't goign to hurt anything for quite sometime. However, they do grow very fast! I gave one to someone purchasing a few items recently who had grown quite large.

My CBS munched on a few zebras too. I hate the CBS too!!

For the most part, hermits do what they need to do to eat and provide a home (shell). Beware all snails!!