prego hermit?

[Rockyreiter]

so my brother brought 2 hermits back from the beach yesterday. both are alive, but one has left his shell and on his fuzzy part he has a bunch of little red circles that are about the size of this period -> .
do hermits leave their shells when they're about to lay eggs?

 

[Rockyreiter]

this is a picture i took of the hermit today.

 

[yote]

Apparently that one did.
Not trying to be a downer or anything,but your gonna end up with problems by adding stuff y'all caught at the beach to your tank all the time.You never know what kind of diseases the wild animals may be carrying or if they will take eat your other livestock.
Just hate to see your tank wiped out by a freeby from the beach.

 

[Rockyreiter]

its not an all time time thing, my brother found the hermits and put them in a bucket with some sand and water. he just happened to catch one of those sand crabs at the same time.

 

[Bifferwine]

Not to mention, these animals are used to very different temperatures than reef animals are. I'm not sure where you are in Texas, but I doubt the water you pulled that crab from was 80 degrees... When you take something from the ocean out of its habitat and add it to a different habitat than it was meant to live in (like a much warmer tank), you are basically slowly boiling the animals to death.

 

[Sharkie]

+1 yote and biff! critters on the beach belong there. no where else....

people get pregnant all the time even if sex isn't an "all the time thing". all it takes is once. You bring in something with a disease it could whip your entire tank out like that. leave them critters in the ocean :)

as far as laying eggs, hermits don't typically come out of their shells unless they are dying. It could be eggs attached but they won't lay them in your tank (since your tank is not the ocean and they lay their eggs into the waves of the tidepools) because there aren't "proper conditions". It may shed the eggs but I'd bank on it probably dying :(

one last tidbit, it may not be reef/fish safe... not that all hermies are nice but i know from a land hermit crab side that if its hairy like that its gonna be a nasty sun of a gun! I would just give it quite a bit of selection from some new shells and take it back to the ocean... slowly acclimate it back into its own water and let it go

 

[dcantucson]

+1 Everyone.
I can't see it's claws, but I bet they are pointed and it is a predator.
Also give it a bigger shell and see if it will go into it.