Blue Hermit Crabs
- Thread starter hans1976
- Start date
jhenson
Member
The only thing I dislike more than the blue hermits are a Coral Banded Shrimp. All are devil spawn. 
The blue legs have killed many Astrea in my 90 gal tank and a few Astrea in my nano. But the one that ticked me off the most was when I added two nassarius snails to my nano one night. The next morning both nassarius shells were on the backs of blue legs. I gave them all to a friend of mine.
I have had scarlet hermits and they don't attack anything but they also didn't do much. Two weeks ago I added 5 zebra hermits to my nano. They are AMAZING!!! So far they have attacked no snails and I have astrea, bumble bee and nassarius. Not to mention I was all ready to get a chemical to get rid of my Cyno outbreak when I put them in. I had tried reduced lighting, reduced feeding, increased waterflow, etc... The zebra's knocked out all Cyno in 4 days. Awesome little critters.
The blue legs have killed many Astrea in my 90 gal tank and a few Astrea in my nano. But the one that ticked me off the most was when I added two nassarius snails to my nano one night. The next morning both nassarius shells were on the backs of blue legs. I gave them all to a friend of mine.I have had scarlet hermits and they don't attack anything but they also didn't do much. Two weeks ago I added 5 zebra hermits to my nano. They are AMAZING!!! So far they have attacked no snails and I have astrea, bumble bee and nassarius. Not to mention I was all ready to get a chemical to get rid of my Cyno outbreak when I put them in. I had tried reduced lighting, reduced feeding, increased waterflow, etc... The zebra's knocked out all Cyno in 4 days. Awesome little critters.
streetdoc
Member
My blues are beasts. plenty of spare shells but they seem to like the shells of my nassarius and the shels my red legged hermits are using. Seems about once a week there are a new set of red legs skidding along the bottom or a set of blue legs sticking out of a nassarius shell. Trying to round them up to put in my fuge and QT.
I
ivanfj
Guest
Originally posted by hans1976
I have recently ordered 20 blue hermit crabs for my reef tank. A friend to me today that is a BIG mistake. Anyone have any experience with them?
It's not a HUGE mistake. It's not like they are gonna crash your tank or do whatever bad. They are just evil. Even if you provide many many extra shells, they just love to take somebody else's shell. If you are looking at some hermits for your clean up crew, red scarlet hermit is the best choice out there.
T
tizzo
Guest
My blues behave rather well. My Zebra jams his claw into the other critters. My blues still are very small, while all of my others (bought at the same time) got real big.
fishman830
Active Member
i took the biggest ones out and put them in a another tank, they wrapped their legs around hte shells of th elittle ones, and with their claws pecked limbs off of the small one.. so i had enough, i'm making the switch to scarlets asap, blues also kille dlike 10 astrea's and 13 scarlets
maxsmart
Member
That is strange; I had heard that blue leg hermits are the most peaceful kind. I had originally bought 3 red-leg ones (not sure if scarlet, they were sold to me as blue-leg hermits at a size too tiny to see that their legs were in fact red) and they were very aggressive. I had so many snails, I don't know if they found some shells of dead ones behind the live rocks or if they killed them, but within a week or two they had grown drastically and "upgraded" to snail shells. I bought upgrade shells, and soon one grew to 1.5". They always tried to grab the shrimp, until one day the big one was on top of one eating him. I threw him in the fuge, and my boss said he'd take him for his new tank. The other 2 grew, one more than the other, but haven't been as bad (then again, I think all the shrimp are dead now, and they're bigger than all the remaining snails). I added 3 true blue-legged hermits from a more reliable pet store, now you guys have me worried about them. Two of them are still in their cerith snail shells they came in, the other has upgraded twice and is now in a black snail shell. I hope they aren't as aggressive as everyone says - they do seem to grow much slower than the red-leg ones did.
jmj6239
Member
I have to agree Blue leggs are the worst in my experience, A few months ago I bought a small group of green legged, zebra, and scarlets, and blue legged just to see who worked the best for me. The scarlets were the most docile and hide the most. the zebras while small always stayed in a group but now as larger go around solo. and the greens are similar to the blues, But I have never witnessed any of them except the blues eating a snail. Who does the best job is still up in the air.