Crabs and compatibility

[robbyville]

Hi folks,

Other than a variety of snails and one Sally Lightfoot crab I have no more crabs in the system.

I am thinking of re-stocking with 20 or so. Can you tell me what risks I run? Will Sally eat small hermits? Will they go after my snails? I also have a Flame Hawkfish, I know that I should not have any shrimps in the tank (gobble, gobble), but would he eat hermit crabs?

Thanks,

Rob

[Samw]

My cleaner shrimps like to eat hermits. Every once in a while I see them snack on a hermit soft abdomen and then I get a half dead hermit crawling around with no abdomen. I even have pics. :) Most likely, 1 hermit attacked another for a shell (I see this all the time in my nano) and the loser was briefly kicked out of his shell and before he had time to move to a vacant shell, a cleaner grabbed it.

In my main tank, my crab population slowly dwindles from predation (only the strong survive). In my nano with no predation, every hermit is still accounted for.

Doesn't really answer your question other than to say that some hermits do get eaten by predation sometimes. I like hermits and have 6 different types in my tank (blue legged, scarlet, zebra, mexican, baha, electric blue)

[Dorkel Marine 1]

I have one suggestion from my experience. Don't mix the Zebra with blue legged hermits. I have 5 very large zebras now. While they grew up they eventually ate all the blue legged hermits. I would recommend staying with one type. Or at least ones that remain similar in size. The red legged crabs I found also don't stand a chance with blue legged hermits. Even when they are bigger.

This has been my experience. I have one tank with only blue legged hermits and they are all accounted for over about 1 year.

George

[christyf5]

Sally will eat any small fish he/she can catch. I never witnessed mine eating any hermits, but she had a particular fondness for snails and gobies. Back to the store she went. :confused:

[Beverly]

I'm with Christy on this one. Especially in a small tank, sally's become very skilled hunters.

[robbyville]

Thanks Folks,

You know Sally has always been wonderful in our tank, but the other day we found our burgundy star and it was not alive, we started to wonder if maybe Sally could be responsible since she is getting pretty large.

She has never gone after our fish though!

Thanks again for the replies!

Rob