too many hermit crabs?

[PsiStar]

Is it possible to have too many?

I have a 50g refugium full of plants with 50 lbs of live rock and a 90g with several fish, 150 lbs of live rock, and a growing coral population. Many astrea snails & similar. Both tanks with 3 or 4 inches of substrate. There is also a ~20g sump. The lights in both the 50 & 90 are Aquatic Life. The live rock (pre-hermits) was covered with a red algae that I have never considered a bad thing in any way, but never too excited about.

My g/f bought 200 hermits; red and blue leg. 100 each and pretty cheap from reefs2go. I think 99% survived although we did not get notification when they shipped and UPS left them at our front door w/o ringing the door bell. So that was surprise when we looked out mid morning.

Back to topic, I will estimate that 75% of that red algae is gone after less than a week. Personally I don't care (but unsure), wife is concerned. Glad I did not order them.:bowdown:

The refugium does have a lot of plants so even with pretty good flow has dead spots. I think the excess hermits in the ref are a great thing. The main tank is really the concern ... and should I even care about the red algae on the live rock?

 

[mariobrothersleeve]

I would get rid of 90% of them. Lets face facts..... Hermits suck! I was an activist or pro-hermit to say and they let me down. They will eat anything once hungry enough. The little bastards ate my koks island maxima clam. With that many words in a name it must have been expensive right? Yep, and this is why i changed my mind. I have 10 of them and i usually pick on them when i clean the tank like "accidently" knocking them off the highest rocks and pushing them towards the nems. Maybe i shouldnt have posted with this recent loss of a clam..... :-) ah who am i kidding

 

[Marinne13]

200 is a lot...maybe go to 20

 

[chichimom79]

I would get rid of 90% of them. Lets face facts..... Hermits suck! I was an activist or pro-hermit to say and they let me down. They will eat anything once hungry enough. The little bastards ate my koks island maxima clam. With that many words in a name it must have been expensive right? Yep, and this is why i changed my mind. I have 10 of them and i usually pick on them when i clean the tank like "accidently" knocking them off the highest rocks and pushing them towards the nems. Maybe i shouldnt have posted with this recent loss of a clam..... :-) ah who am i kidding

The point of the forum is to share the good and bad experiences with others so that perhaps they can learn from our mistakes, so sharing when things die and why is very helpful. If we keep those things to ourselves, we may never find or fix the problem. So thank you for sharing a bad experience.
I am also not a fan of hermits. They are snail killers in my opinion, even if given plenty of empty shells to choose from. I have one or two hermits and they both live in my sump after several cerith snail murders.

 

[Sidekick41]

Now that you shared that, I have to agree too many in a bad thing. It seems like every time I turn around one of my hermit crabs is sporting a new shell and I have on a pile of old empty ones laying around everywhere. I might not, mind too much if they would pick up after themselves.

 

[Marinne13]

I love hermits but they LOVE to walk all over your frags and just flat out be jerks

I am prob only going to put 4 in my 65G

 

[AnthonyTheNewbie]

I hope you over feed like crazy. If you want something to clean the sand instead of hermits: Nassarius Snails, for Glass: Ceriths, and for Rocks: Turbos.

Most people stay away from hermits because of the problems they cause. However, they are very good for clean up.

 

[PsiStar]

The piles of live rock in the 90G help. I do have a lot of nassarius, ceriths, & turbos. Some of the snails have been in the tank for a long time ... they have a good coat of algae. Or, they did at least. Sometimes snails find each other and hitch hike doing some cleaning. The crabs on the other hand, lets just say that the snails that have been found never looked so good. And, there is still a snail living inside! So far.

The 50G refugium has a scaled down amount of live rock and plenty of plants that have been added over the past 5 months. Similarly scaled down number of snails. I actually over did the plants, had a little die off, but now steady state. It is so hard to judge how much a "golf ball" or a "softball" size is. Then define growth rate? Trust me, I look all this up from multiple sites before I pull the trigger. Added over the same period are pods, amphipods & copepods from reefs2go. A bazillion of those critters. Added a mandarin gobie ... it seems to be happy happy happy! Also, *no* typical green algae on the walls.

The 200 crabs (also reefs2go), 100 each tank, have been busy. I really think that there is more for them to do in the ref than there is the 90G. But the pile of live rock in the 90G is keeping them busy. This live rock is full of hollows and deep crevices. It was not the intention to get so many crabs. All I can say is read the description carefully. I think both of these were 2 for 1 ... that little tidbit was missed at order time.

 

[DaveDiveMaster]

That's a lot of hermits, but that said, I keep a lot in my tanks as well. They WILL eat snails occasionally, and I don't keep clams anymore because they killed one. (At least, I'm blaming them.) But, they are great cleaners and will eat just about all the crud including cyano bacteria, hair algea, slime, detrirus, etc..