Hermits forgiven. Emerald BUSTED.

[lastlight]

Am I crazy? My moonlights aren't super bright but i swear I saw one of them picking at my birdsnest and there happen to be some white areas in the past 2 days that appear scraped.

It's growing new little points all over so I think the coral itself is doing really well.

[fishoholic]

I have the same thing with one of my sps, one spot that looks scraped, but otherwise doing well. I thought maybe I hit it with the feeding tongs but I don't remember doing so. However I don't have hermits (I do have a crab and a pistol shrimp) so I'm not what happened to it.

[fishytime]

perhaps some dead tissue that the hermie smelled?......only time any of my inverts(hermits/sexy shrimp) have picked at a coral was when the coral was slightly damaged and had some dead or dieing tissue.....

[trinac]

I saw the exact same thing a few days ago, the hermit crab was sitting at the top of my birdsnest where new growth is forming. I took the crab off and put it on the rock near the birdsnest, and it had the gall to crawl all the way back to the top of the coral. After that, he promptly took a flight to the other side of the tank and he hasn't found his way back so far.

[Lance]

Oh yeah, those little #%@&*%#$ will eat anything. They totally stripped a large frag of Hydnophora I had in the frag tank. Banished them to the sump where hopefully they will eat each other.

[lastlight]

Hmm...I only have 5 hermits but no sump. I'll keep an eye on them I guess.

[kien]

Hermit crabs are opportunistic scavengers by nature. If they are hungry and spot an opportunity, they will scavenge anything they can get their claws on. I try to keep my hermits happy and fed with chunks of shrimp that I'll throw in every couple of nights or so. Have yet to see any hermits go to town on a coral.

[lastlight]

Yeah I thought since there was a little algae on the rocks that'd be good enough. I might have to give them some mysis occasionally as I was doing when they were introduced and maybe leave the algae to the Vlamingi since he's looking really thin.

[Doug]

Brett, my scarlets always sat in or near the top of my sps. Some of the crabs are several yrs. old. Never seemed to bother the corals and not sure what they were eating. Perhaps algae of some sort or coral slime?

I,m more worried about my larger red mithrax crabs if all their algae is gone.

[lastlight]

I've gotten really efficient at getting food to the fish now that I know the currents etc. So It's mainly sounding like the crabs are sorta ok as long as they're fed. Hate to feed those lazy buggers lol.

My emerald is the hardest working of them all though.