Hermits Attacking Snails

[tarpons]

I bought an algae attack pack the from liveaquaria.com 2 weeks ago. They've done a beautiful job cleaning up the aquarium. However, the red-tipped hermits are attacking the margarita snails as well as one of the abalones, killing them, eating them, and taking their shell's (not the abalone's shell of course). They will literally overrun a healthy looking snail, knock it over, and attack en masse. Is this ususal? Or are my snails just unhealthy, and thus natural pickings for the hermits? My 3 skunk cleaner shrimp and 1 fire shrimp are thriving. A few of the scarlet legged hermits as well as the red-tipped hermits seemed to have perished.

The SG is still on the low side at 1.021, pH 8.2, nitrates <20ppm, nitrites 0, ammonia 0. I have a 95 gallon with live rock, a flame angel, 2 yellow clown gobies, 2 green clown gobies, 1 citrine goby, 2 purple firefish, 2 firefish, 1 Randall's goby, 1 red-head goby, 2 percula clowns, 1 diamond watchman goby (haven't seen again since introduction 1 week ago), 1 tail spot blenny (haven't seen since introduction 3 weeks ago). And three of the biggest, healthiest-looking, but greatly dispised mollies you've ever seen (can't get the suckers out yet, but I'm still working on it, think I'll try the soda bottle trick). The water is r/o with Reef Crystals. I have a Coral life compact flourescent 50/50 actinic and 10K on about 14 hours daily.

Thanks for any insight!
Candy

 

[Anonymous]

Candy,

My hermits do this to my snail from time to time. I would use the snails instead of hermits. They are opportunist creatures.

You have 19 fish in your 90ga? 8O

How long has your system been running?

 

[bleedingthought]

I've had good luck with keeping a large amount of snails and only a few small hermits.

And you must really like gobies and blennies, huh?

 

[dnorton1978]

Candy,

My hermits do this to my snail from time to time. I would use the snails instead of hermits. They are opportunist creatures.

You have 19 fish in your 90ga? 8O

How long has your system been running?

Actually I believe it is a 95 gallon

 

[waymack97]

wow thats a lot of load on that tank. how often do you do water changes? my small blue legged hermits seem to leave my snails alone, i had red ones and they picked on my snails.
_________________
usa recession

 

[bleedingthought]

Doesn't seem like that big of a load to me at all, actually. :roll:

 

[trido]

Candy,



You have 19 fish in your 90ga? 8O

LOL, I had to count that one out to... Holy cow candy. Thats alot of gobies. Thats alot of fish, your only saving grace is that theyre all small ones. We wont call the fish police on you this time. And yes, unfortunately, hermits are omnivores and will eat your snails when algeas are low or when they need bigger shells.

 

[shavo]

I think she is ok with this set up, they are all small fish and she says she hasn't seen some of them since the introduction,

a blenny fan huh?

 

[tarpons]

Hi Again,

Yes, I like the little guys. The diamond watchman has started showing himself in the past couple of days. The soda bottle trick worked for removing the mollies.

I'm changing 10% of the water every other week. I am hoping that since these are all pretty darn small fish even at their adult sizes, that they will work for this set up. I've already figured I'm going to have to set up another tank to move into those wonderful wrasses. But it seems to me that 5 clown gobies probably aren't the bio equivalent of a medium size tang or a lion fish or such. I'm probably too naieve, huh? :wink:

For the future, I think I will leave further crabs out of my cleaners.

Thanks for the input!
Candy