poll on hermits

[jadeclam]

red legs?

blue legs?

[Tattooedlife]

Scarlet reef.....

[reefland]

Scarlet, mexican and blues. One sally as well.

[Doh]

Reds and Blues!

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"Weaseling out of things is important to learn. It's what separates us from the animals. Except the weasel." - Homer Simpson

[saltjunkie]

i agree with DOH!!!!

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Whoever invented salt water aquariums should be shot for taking all my money...everyday, oh well gotta have something to do!

[Noah]

Scarlets and blues

[tendar]

red and a few blues small

[mazer62]

Scarlet reef.. Blue leg and sally lights.
And I picked up a three Blue leg with Black bands around them.. Very interesting hermits, but I have no Clue to what they are...

[Doug Lowey]

Scarlets, banished all blues.

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Doug Lowey

[plankton]

'Hawaiian/Hallowean' hermits. Forgive the misspelled
common names, but they're about golfball sized, colorful and fun to watch. If you do get one for your
reef don't forget to cement those SPS down or they'll
get knocked over.

I also have red/blue and scarlets.

[Reefman19]

Scarletts and Blues + one very large sallylightfoot!!!

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Greg

[nick danger]

I got a hermit recently, started with 3 but now only have one. Its definitely the most attractive hermit Ive seen, and so far no more destructive than maybe a blue legged. It has very bright and distinct black and blue stripes, very vibrant colors. Anyone seen one of these?

[rmoro]

An excerpt from an article about coraline algae-eating hermit crabs:

"Red legged hermit crabs from the Sea of Cortez, although fairly efficient cleaners, like to eat the faster growing types of soft coralline algae and have been totally or partially excluded from some commercial coralline rock growing systems for this reason. I get letters from people who are adding the above supplements to speed the growth of coralline algae and it still doesn't grow! Too often the mystery of the missing coralline turns out to be the use of too many red legged hermit crabs. This results in the rocks ending up with a dull gray-green look which is easy to identify once you've seen it a few times. I can get better coralline algae growth by simply using only CaribSea aragonite sand and no coralline eaters, than the person who uses all the additives above and is hooked on using coralline eaters. Or if you are in a real hurry to grow good coralline algae, you can get the very fastest growth by eliminating the coralline algae eaters and also adding some of the above supplements.

(The pictures below illustrate coralline algae growth. The first four pictures lack good growth of pink and purple coralline algae. Why? Low pH? Low KH (alkalinity)? Low calcium? Too many coralline algae eating herbivores?)


(Left) A reef tank with mostly tank-raised live rock which was originally dry bare rock. These rocks are still developing coralline algae. This tank is 6.5 months old in this picture. By this time, the tank-raised live rocks would have normally been fairly purple and pink form good coralline algae growth. Then why the dull grey-green look on the rocks? Even the wild coralline live rocks used in this tank to seed the new rocks with coralline spores are now missing a lot of their own original coralline algae.

(Right) Closeup of same tank at 20 months of age. Note, a little more purple and pink coralline algae now shows, but the dull gray-green areas on the live rock still dominate. Lot's of live coral helps take attention away from the missing coralline algae in some reef tanks. This tank lacks truly good coralline growth, but it is very clean since it has plenty of algae-eating cleaners.



This 8 month old reef aquarium shows the same gray-green look on its tank-raised live rock.

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This close-up of a nearly 3 year old reef tank also has a dominant gray-green look on the live rock.

*****(The reef aquariums above are all dosed with the same top rated additives to provide trace elements, vitamins, calcium, magnesium, strontium, and elevated pH and KH. These are ideal conditions for growing coralline algae! Puzzled??? What else do these reef tanks have in common? They each have a good number of Mexican red leg blue spot hermit crabs which not only help clean the tanks of undesirable algae, but also eat coralline algae. The hermit crab Clibanarius digueti from the Mexico area is a coralline algae eater, and is only one of many varieties of hermit crabs called "red leg hermit crabs". Two of the "red leg" hermit crabs from the Sea of Cortez, AKA Gulf of California, have big appetites for coralline algae, C. digueti is the most common one sold.*****

This is my own 7 month old 29-gallon reef tank which has 100% tank-raised live rock, all of which is less than the age of the tank (mostly 4-6 months old), and grown in this tank with the exception of one rock. The large mushroom rock (front right)is just over 1.5 months old in this picture! It was started in another tank with stronger lighting and then moved to this tank after the mushroom anemones attached and the rock was not much more than 2 weeks old. When first moved to this tank, this rock had small splotches of pink and purple coralline algae starts all over it, but the rock was still mostly white/beige and greenish looking when moved to this tank. No calcium supplements or buffers were added to this tank. Trace elements in low doses were all that was added to this tank. Calcium, strontium, magnesium, and buffering are provided by the tank-raised live sand made from dry bagged CaribSea Seaflor aragonite Reef Sand. The coralline algae would grow even faster if this tank were receiving the same additives as the 3 reef tanks shown above. This 100% tank-raised reef aquarium has NO red-legged hermit crabs (C. digueti) to impede coralline algae growth by eating it.


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ABOVE: Valerie Miller's tank-raised "xenia forest", shown about 6 months before this article was written. It has GROWN since this picture! There are four types of xenia shown above in her 75-gallon reef tank. Also note: The large concrete rock is kept nearly clean of coralline algae, looking dull gray-green. Other rocks are lacking in really good coralline growth too, a classic sign that certain hermit crabs are present which eat more coralline than you might like them to. Coralline would normally be quite obvious and starting to flourish on new concrete rock by the end of two months in a reef tank like this rock has been. The other tank-raised rocks are a year old. Coralline growth is still somewhat lacking, even with just a modest number of Mexican red leg blue spot hermit crabs present (C. digueti) which are cleaning the rock of alga, including coralline algae. In the past six months the number of hermits has decreased due to natural die-off and cannibalism. The pink, mauve and purple coralline algae is growing better now. In another test I performed, I put two small uncured concrete rocks in two HANDY Reef tanks with identical dosing and care. One tank had a very modest number of C. digueti hermit crabs in it and the other tank had none. The concrete rock in the tank with none of these hermits became almost totally covered in coralline on top and sides within just 2.5 months! The new concrete rock in the other tank, with C. digueti hermits, was still struggling to grow coralline algae, with very little coverage of coralline algae even after 6 months! The gray concrete changed colors, to a dominant gray-green look, like the picture above. The C. digueti hermits tend to keep new rocks cleaned of coralline algae the best. Another interesting observation was made. As expected and often observed elsewhere the coralline growing on the glass of the tank with C. digueti hermits was slightly less dense than in the tank without these hermits which had much more coralline already growing everywhere since there were no coralline "preditors" present. Remember, the more coralline in a tank the faster it spreads to new rocks and the glass. The coralline growing on the glass of the tank with the hermits eventually grew so thick that the hermits were finally able to climb the coralline covered glass and start stripping it too! All of this should come as no surprise since these hermits have been extensively observed to eat coralline algae in addition to their diet of snails and even coral polyps. They are omnivores of course and this should also be no surprise. In live rock farming it is critical to NOT include certain hermit crabs which eat coralline algae like candy. Claims to the contrary should be a red flag as to the honesty or knowledge of such claimants. "


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Rocco

[bajathree]

Scarlets and blues

[indianajones]

My blues ate my snails.

[ScottC]

Hot Pink

[Frank Billingham]

Red Legged Scarlets, Orange legged Scarlets, Black & White Hawaiians, Baha Red legs, Orange Micro, Electric Blues and Sally Lightfoots. Also bannished all blue legs over a year ago.



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________________

Happy Reefin'

Frank

[Brewster]

Mine are red legged.

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"No TV and no beer make Homer go some thing something........" H.S.

[REAL BIG FISH]

Scarlet Reef and unfortunatly a couple blues in the mix.

Jamey[img]/ubb/biggrin.gif[/img]

[Snailman]

We do not have any hermit crabs in any of our tanks. here is a quote from an article by Dr. Ron Shimek.

Hermit crabs are relatively rare in natural reef situations, they are never found is dense numbers on coral reef rocks. The corals and anemones in these areas are adapted neither to the crab's competition for food nor to the physical damage caused by the pitter-patter of pointy feet. Additionally, as many aquarists have found out, many of the hermit crab species are significant predators on grazing snails. These snails, unlike the crabs, really are herbivorous. ... Like locasts, they are capable of removing many organisms, both by eating them or by physically damaging them.

We had enough snails killed and also watched them steal food from the corals that we were feeding and so we caught them all and took them back to the LFS years ago.