Crab attack.
- Thread starter Baianotang
- Start date
most of us that have kept crabs, hermits and otherwise, know that they are opportunistic feeders that are likely to eat anything that they find pallatable.
my dislike of crabs is not for the chance they might eat my fish or large inverts.
i dislike them because they are destructive. too often they will knock things over, rob food from sessile inverts, kill small sessiles that inhabit the surfaces of LR, kill grazing snails, and then kill one another.
i also must say that yes, there are some that don't seem the least bit interested in eating algae and others don't seem interested in foraging at all... a hermit that is often sold here as a "mexican red leg" seems to prefer to prey upon it's meals. in my tank they will be found perching upon a high stone waiting for another hermit or snail to pass by. the predatory hermit will then perform a scrambling attack, and if needed, chase it's prey (other hermits like bluelegs will actually run from them).
the "mexican red leg" (which has legs that appear more brown to me, with yellowish white tips) will then violently shake and pull a hermit from it's shell and consume it's soft tissue.
if the prey happens to be a gastropod, it will overturn the animal and then wait for it to venture out of it's shell again. i have seen this happen to more than one unlucky nassarius. any time other than hunting you will find this hermit half way hidden in it's shell perched menacingly upon a peak of the aquascape while the other species are foraging for food.
so, i see no need for any of these buggers in an established system, i have added some hermits (won't add crabs as they are hard to remove if they get mischievous) to my new tank in hopes that they would help consume die off on my new LR but i added a slim few and i don't plan on replacing any of them after they kill one another off.
some people enjoy hermits and i see no reason not to keep them if they are valued as pets.
however, if the reason for keeping them in a reef tank is for the benefits they will provide, then i must differ with the opinion that they offer any benefit at all... in the longrun, that is.
i have kept symbiotic crabs and find them to be harmless as they seldom ever venture far from their host.
my dislike of crabs is not for the chance they might eat my fish or large inverts.
i dislike them because they are destructive. too often they will knock things over, rob food from sessile inverts, kill small sessiles that inhabit the surfaces of LR, kill grazing snails, and then kill one another.
i also must say that yes, there are some that don't seem the least bit interested in eating algae and others don't seem interested in foraging at all... a hermit that is often sold here as a "mexican red leg" seems to prefer to prey upon it's meals. in my tank they will be found perching upon a high stone waiting for another hermit or snail to pass by. the predatory hermit will then perform a scrambling attack, and if needed, chase it's prey (other hermits like bluelegs will actually run from them).
the "mexican red leg" (which has legs that appear more brown to me, with yellowish white tips) will then violently shake and pull a hermit from it's shell and consume it's soft tissue.
if the prey happens to be a gastropod, it will overturn the animal and then wait for it to venture out of it's shell again. i have seen this happen to more than one unlucky nassarius. any time other than hunting you will find this hermit half way hidden in it's shell perched menacingly upon a peak of the aquascape while the other species are foraging for food.
so, i see no need for any of these buggers in an established system, i have added some hermits (won't add crabs as they are hard to remove if they get mischievous) to my new tank in hopes that they would help consume die off on my new LR but i added a slim few and i don't plan on replacing any of them after they kill one another off.
some people enjoy hermits and i see no reason not to keep them if they are valued as pets.
however, if the reason for keeping them in a reef tank is for the benefits they will provide, then i must differ with the opinion that they offer any benefit at all... in the longrun, that is.
i have kept symbiotic crabs and find them to be harmless as they seldom ever venture far from their host.
I have witnessed mithrax munching on my button polyps, xenia, and star polyps. I have cracked open a half dying clam and found pea crab held tight to the tissue of the shelled clam. I have set traps in the hope to find causes to missing fish and end up with a half dollar size reddish crab and for periods afterwards no more fish went MIA.
Pic? sorry, no pic. But if these weren't convincing, you are welcome to keep crabs of all kinds in your tank.
Unless you are willing to stay up all night with night vision camera staking out in front of your tank whole night hoping you can catch a glimps of crabs snatching your fish behind the rock works, otherwise people can always argue the pic of the crab taken is simply the crab doing scavenging of a dead fish.
Pic? sorry, no pic. But if these weren't convincing, you are welcome to keep crabs of all kinds in your tank.
Unless you are willing to stay up all night with night vision camera staking out in front of your tank whole night hoping you can catch a glimps of crabs snatching your fish behind the rock works, otherwise people can always argue the pic of the crab taken is simply the crab doing scavenging of a dead fish.
Podman":17htips5 said:
Good question. Yeah, that wasn't the problem. I put the starfish in, it was fine for a couple days, and then I went on a short vacation. When I got back it was in pieces and hermit crabs were eating it. There was almost no other food in the tank, they had been hungry for a while, but I never considered they would eat it, now I get it. They are oppertunistic feeders. They were the only animals that could have killed it. I took them out.
The only damage my crabs do is to topple rockwork and coral. I have two of the electric blue leg hermit crabs and they're total bulldozers, so much so that I might get rid of them. The scarlet reef, blue leg and zebra hermits though ... nary a problem. They're well behaved.
My electric blue-legged hermit crab insists on sitting on top of my frogspawn coral. Hes not eating it, hes not picking at it; hes not even paying attention to it! But of all the places there are to "perch" in my tank, the moron chooses my delicate frogspawn, which then recoils into its skeleton once the crab mounts it! ARGH! I have to use the net to just plain knock him off, and he goes tumbling down, but sooner or later, there he is again!!! ARRRGGGGGHHHH!!! The most irritating behavior Ive witnessed in a crab simply because he seems bent on defying me!
Yeah, crabs are a group rough around the edges; Ive seen my BIG electric blue legged hermit rip the body of my fancy turban snail (this thing was BIG itself, like and inch and a half in diameter, if not bigger) right out of its shell, out of spite! It didnt even make the shell its home!
The other REALLLLLLLYYYY anoying thing about these stupid animals (hermits) is just that; theyre STUPID! Mine are always climbing into places they always get stuck into, and then find away to cause enough damage to their surroundings to allow them to wiggle free! Mine hermits also INSIST upon climbing up on rocks, the trying to climb up the glass, clicking and clacking as they bash their shell against the glass WHILE IM TRYING TO SLEEP!!!!
No, Id say that Im gonna stick with the Dwarf Zebra hermits, and few of them at that!
I will say though that the hermits I have gotten have always proved their usefulness by eating a trail through whatever is on the rock where I set them down for the first time out of the bag. They eat through algae, detritus, and even a thick layer of red slime!!! Talk about Grazing Trails!
Anywho, just throwin' it out there...
Yeah, crabs are a group rough around the edges; Ive seen my BIG electric blue legged hermit rip the body of my fancy turban snail (this thing was BIG itself, like and inch and a half in diameter, if not bigger) right out of its shell, out of spite! It didnt even make the shell its home!
The other REALLLLLLLYYYY anoying thing about these stupid animals (hermits) is just that; theyre STUPID! Mine are always climbing into places they always get stuck into, and then find away to cause enough damage to their surroundings to allow them to wiggle free! Mine hermits also INSIST upon climbing up on rocks, the trying to climb up the glass, clicking and clacking as they bash their shell against the glass WHILE IM TRYING TO SLEEP!!!!
No, Id say that Im gonna stick with the Dwarf Zebra hermits, and few of them at that!
I will say though that the hermits I have gotten have always proved their usefulness by eating a trail through whatever is on the rock where I set them down for the first time out of the bag. They eat through algae, detritus, and even a thick layer of red slime!!! Talk about Grazing Trails!
Anywho, just throwin' it out there...
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