invert question

[mike tv]

probably just a newbie stressing over a mundane detail
but i've noticed a certain 'apathy' amongst my CUC
over the last couple days I've added an electric orange hermit, and then 2 nassarrius snails

they are all alive and well, as far as i can tell

when the hermit went in, he remained fairly immobile for a couple hours until the lights shut off, at which point he headed for a corner of the tank, the next morning, he had wedged himself into a corner between the glass and a piece of rock, and slowly pulled himself into a tiny sort of cave (i can vaguely make out his orange bits when i peer in through the hole from the front) and he has not moved in about 48 hours (more than say.. an inch and a half)

the moment the 2 nassarrius hit the dirt they started motoring around. after the sort of lazy, slow lumbering i saw from my hermit, i basically expected the snails to be immobile, but to my surprise they were actually quick little guys. the smaller one took straight for the glass and the larger one munched on some sprouting GHA. When i woke up the larger one had taken to the upper rim of the glass while the smaller one had affixed itself to a scoket like hole in one of the rocks (took about 30 mins to find where it even was in a 10gallon) and hasnt moved in the 8 hours since. the larger one has made its way mostly all the way around the glass, and is very active and speedy.

are my hermit and snail dying? scared? is anything wrong at all or is this just paranoia?

also: will my larger snail attempt to make a fresh-air-break for it?

his head (? is it a head?) was out of the water earlier, but hes been at the same height in the tank for aobut 12hr

thanks

mike

[jbc123]

Do you not have sand? Nassarius snails will spend most of the day buried.

[mike tv]

i've got sand
you've got me running to liveaquaria to see if i got the wrong kind of snails
perhaps the one has simply "buried" himself in this hole in the rock? he looks comfortable
but the other one is active as hell, motoring along still across the waterline

[mike tv]

upon checking things out more closely, they might be mexican ceriths
they have extremely long shells that look sharp enough to stab someone with
ill try and get pictures later on

[shuguley]

There is a chance your hermit may be about to molt. It's funny with my larger hermits, I can usually tell about 2 days before they molt because they will usually go to one of the corners of the aquarium or they will stuff themselved into a little cave in the rock. Then once they molt they continue to hang out in the same spot for another day or two, then they start scavenging around again.

Every large hermit, like scarlet reef hermits, I have put in my aquarium has molted within the first week.

[kel2682]

Did you acclamate them, snails are sensitive to this and may not show signs of stress for days.....Just a thought
http://www.reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=941816&highlight=aclimation+for+inverts

[jbc123]

Nassarius snails are easily identified by their elephant-like trunk. They use it to poke and prod around searching for food and when they bury they can extend it above the substrate just in case some food appears nearby. When you feed the tank they are like little zombies popping up out of the ground.

[mike tv]

hm
ther hermit molting had crossed my mind. he gets very agitated even at being seen, and when i moved a rock a bit allowing him some refuge beneath it, he tucked himself in so far that i can no longer even see his shell.
the snails perked up, they are both out and about on the glass, which makes me thing that they are, indeed, not nassarius. although i do see (what looks like) a trunk on one, the shell and behaviour just do not match.

should i worry about making sure my hermit has a bigger shell to move into? i have some shells in there, but i was expecting to buy a smaller hermit who would grow into said shells, im not even sure he could fit in the biggest one i've got, little bugger.

[mike tv]

im pretty sure they're ceriths from a google search

stupid big als

[shuguley]

I would toss some extra shells in there. I bet your crab is about to molt, the behavior you're describing is just like mine.

It's funny because a couple weeks ago I got a couple more hermits that I thought were scarlet reef hermits, but they turned out to be orange claw hermits. Well anyway, one of them stuffed his whole body and shell into this little cave in the rocks and didn't move for a whole day. I though he was stuck, so I moved him clear across the tank. About an hour later he was back in the same cave, so I was like whatever. Well, the next morning, he was still in the cave and it looked like he was being pushed out of shell from the inside. So I thought he was dead and another crab was pushing his body out of the shell. Well once his body finally came out, I realized he actually just molted. The next day he was walking all over the aquarium like nothing happened.

Just be advised that when your crabs molt, sometimes the molt looks like a dead crab.

[mike tv]

haha! he is definitely molting

i thought he might have gotten stuck while trying to hide, so i tipped his shell over the other way (his feelt werent touching the ground the way he was, i believe he had gotten stuck lying on his back. he tucked into his shell out of fear of me, and then as soon as my hand was out of the tank his legs came back out, he scurried up and got stuck the same way again. i moved the rock, and he got into his cave.
i'll have to go get some bigger shells from big dumb als.