Barnicle Preditors?

[GassyMon]

On New Years Eve I had a party and me and my neighbor cooked sea food. We has scallops and saw living barnicles on them. They survived being trucked to Jewel, Frozen, put on ice, frozen again, sanitized and have been now thrown in my tank... I cleanned the shells and soaked them in saltwater and cleaned again and again to make sure they were decent for my tank. But today I noticed that my hermit crabs have been killing them, 10 barnicles that were clearly living. They survived all that to be eaten by hermits? Is that normal for them to eat barnicles?

 

[Hiker4twenty]

I think they're eat pretty much anything they can get. They're opportunistic eaters.

 

[Bifferwine]

What is the temperature of the environment these barnacles live in naturally? And what is the temperature of your tank? If the crabs aren't eating them, you are surely just cooking them in a reef tank anyways.

 

[GassyMon]

My tank is around 75, not sure about where they came from. They sprouted out and started pulsing and tounging? the water into there shells but the hermit crabs were picking at them while they were pulsing.

 

[johnmaloney]

the pulsing is normal feeding behavior, tons of live barnacles in hermit spots, but if a hermit is hungry it will kill before starve. Is the tank too clean for them to find other food?

fl is big in the scallop business, and the barnacles you will find from here could survive in a reef, good chance it would been from the gulf. hopefully you have more ?