Has anyone ever raised hermit crabs? I swear I have a new one in my tank. I had a few scarlet leg crabs but yesterday I saw a very small one in there. I know I did not have any that small before. Nothing new added so no hitchhiker. ??!! DO crabs reproduce in aquariums easily?
baby hermit crab?
- Thread starter copepod
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Krish
RF STAFF
I'm not sure about hermit crabs, but snails do. The thing about hermit crabs is they need to change shells as they grow (not sure if that goes for all species, but the local ones I've seen like the blue legged do) What this means is that if you don't have an assortment of empty shells and different sizes, chances are they will kill a snail for their bigger shell or out-grow their shell and die. So with that being said, without these few requirements being met, they won't be able to reproduce unless they are fully grown and in a shell they no longer need to change out of. If the requirements are being met...That's another story. I'm not sure if hermits get it on like rabbits and hamsters do, but I'm sure someone here will know
Krish
RF STAFF
ROFL...I better shut up them
That's how I noticed him. All the rest of mine have moved into much bigger shells and here's this little tiny bugger that has one of my little snail shells on it. I have had tons of snail eggs lately and I see lots of baby snails so who knows. Maybe my tank is just a reproducin machine!
Krish
RF STAFF
I see new stuff in my little bare tank all the time! I could imagine how some tanks are that really have life in it! I think it was Paul (PaulB) that says he uses a magnifying glass to look at his tank...I guess that way, you'd probably see things that will make you want to boil your rocks!
KRMNAL1
Well-known member
I'm not going anywhere near that one
A few months after I set my tank up we kept seeing little baby Hermits that we did not buy so I had the same question you are now asking. I have probably 8 to 12 Blue leg Hermits that are decent size now and I never bought any of them, we did buy a clean up crew with 3 red leggers. For a couple months we just kept seeing more and more blue leggers, maybe they were just in some small crevice of the LR you and I bought and are now coming out
From my experience, the hermits do breed. I've started systems without LR before, so they weren't coming in on that. I found that if you have a lot of very small shells scattered around, you'll notice them crawling sooner or later. I think it's because the crabs breed, but the babies have nothing to take shelter in. So they either get eaten or just die. But, I may be 100% wrong.
