Homicidal Hermit crabs?

[Brie]

Ok, this is really beginning to piss me off...

I've gone through 2 feather dusters in as many weeks. SOMETHING is digging up the dusters out of the sand and killing them. It happens either at night(turn the light on in the morning, and its been dug up and is laying ontop of the sand), or discover it when I come home from work.

Its an 8gal nano tankl that contains 1 very small YTB damsel, 1 black percula clown, nassarius snails(maybe 2?), 1 turbo snail, and maybe 6 dwarf hermits(Most of them I think are the "dwarf mexican red tip", and a couple blue leg). Are the hermit crabs doing this? They're the ones I most often see going after food i've given my corals/mushrooms. Are they attacking my feather dusters too? Or are the nassarius snails going crazy?

 

[Kurt_Nelson]

My guess is the nassarius snails, but it's purely a guess. Do you have the big tongan ones, or the little ones? Either way, I've noticed mine (both big and small) get pretty aggressive when I have an upside down snail. Homicidal is a good term for them.

 

[wgchristman]

Up until recently, I had tons of small feather dusters. That was until my Majestic Angel ate them all. I have the large Tongan Nassarius as well as red and blue leg hermits and have not seen them prey on the feather dusters.

I'd say it was the fish that are doing it. Most likely the damsel.

 

[theJ]

Hey Brie, thats a whole lot of cleanup crew in your 8g, more specifically a whole lot of hermits. I don't know to tell you the truth, if the hermits are the ones causing your dusters grief (maybe the nassarius is burrowing under/displacing them?), but I do know in my 58g I only have 3-4 hermits, and those little buggers get nasty when they are hungry. Unless you feed a lot -like 2 frozen formula 1 cubes daily- you could probably replace all those hermits with 1 or 2 turbos.

 

[vwmoneypit]

yep i have went thru about 4 elconces b4 I found the hermits were in a salt water gang.
never caught there name but what I did is woke up about 2 hrs after light out and flick bam caught in the act ,try it! ohh yeah and damsels when still hungry try to delodge little things around the floor for leftovers