Hermits killing snails?

[Blazer88]

I can't seem to keep astrea snails alive with these little killers running in my tank. I only have about 5 or 6 hermit crabs and have bought $40 worth of clean-up snails, leaving me with about 5 or 6 snails left. I see these hermits are sportin' new shells lately as well. Should I remove all of my hermit crabs and just keep snails for clean-up? Every time I see a snail flipped over I worry about the little bugger. I don't know if they are killing the snails or just eating dead ones. What is the live span of these snails?

 

[nasher8860]

Astrea live pretty long from my experience..If I were you I would try throwing some empty hermit or snail shells in there and hope they are just looking for new houses. I try to keep a good variety of empty shells in my tank so hermits don't turn on eachother or snails when they want to move.

 

[spongebob lover]

if i was you i would try catching them all.
or if you really wanna keep crabs, i would say to just keep one if they are not that big.
One thing that i did when i had these type of crabs is ... i bought some big empty shells and that helped because then all of them wanted the big shells.

 

[Angelscrx]

In my experience blue leg hermits won't hurt live astrea snails. They will however tear into a dead that has fallen from the glass. Astreas live in areas where there is mostly a lot rock on the reef and so when they fall they can grab a hold of something and turn over. If they fall on the sand they will grab the sand and pull it to them but it won't help them turn over. In such they starve to death and then the hermits clean them out and move in. Blue legs will wipe out nassarius snails though :evil: If I see an astrea on its back I turn it over.

Red leg hermits are a lot let aggressive but don't tend to live very long in my experience. I keep a lot of empty shells in my tank for the hermits to move into and so far I haven't had very many problems with either color hermit.

 

[clayswim]

Every Blue-legged Hermit I've ever had not only killed Astreas, but also each other. I stick to the Scarlet Reef variety; I've never had one kill anything.

Clayton

 

[Woodstock]

IME, most hermits will kill for pleasure it seems The best hermit to have are the scarlets. I have several scarlets in my tank with no problems.

 

[Angelscrx]

Not only are scarlets less agressive but they are prettier too! :lol:

 

[matts125]

hermits

I have blue leg hermits and they eat my astrea snails too, I think it is just for a new home over time I have accumulated a lot of empty shells on the sand bed, and it seems that the hermits don't eat the snails as much any more, at one time I bet they would eat up to 15 astrea's a month, that could get expensive, so just keep a good amount of empty and varied sizes of shells in your tank and they should slow down on eating the snails...


Matt Krom