Hermits who like to eat snails...possible solution?

[hatebreed]

I have a friend who keeps turtles as well as saltwater. His girlfriend brought home some zoo med turtle food, which as it turns out, are just dead snails with no shells. He's been feeding them to his hermits and they seem to like them.

However, he's never had a hermit kill a snail before. So that made me curious. Is it possible feeding one of these occasionally to the hermits (mine have killed snails) would keep their appetite at bay, or do you think it would just increase their appetite for snails and encourage them to kill living snails for the treat and a new house?

[geekreef_05]

dude, they're hermits. they'll eat anything that they can tear apart and fit in their mouth.

I think you should forget about feeding your hermits at all. Its more than likely they dont need the extra food.

[hatebreed]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=8327409#post8327409 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by geekreef_05
dude, they're hermits. they'll eat anything that they can tear apart and fit in their mouth.

I think you should forget about feeding your hermits at all. Its more than likely they dont need the extra food.

Yeah, I have no need to feed mine. He has a tank overrun with them, the tank is spotless. He has no choice but to feed them until he can get rid of some.

I just thought perhaps if one has a hermit that has a particular taste for snails, perhaps appeasing his tastes once every week or two might help one stop losing snails.

Just a thought.

[Lake75]

In my opinion/experience, hermit crabs don't eat snails unless they're close to dead or the crabs can't find other suitable shells. I keep plenty empty shells in my tank and I don't see my hermits bother snails at all.

[JeffersonReef]

I just hunted out and removed every scarlet hermit from my tank as well as my sand star... and replaced them with nas snails. My cleanup crew now consists of just 20 nas snails, 3 emerald crabs, 2 brittle stars, and about 15 electric blue hermits. so far so good. I got tired of the scarlet hermits (which had gotten quite large) eating my snails and sporting their shells!

-tony

[JeffersonReef]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=8328029#post8328029 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by Lake75
In my opinion/experience, hermit crabs don't eat snails unless they're close to dead or the crabs can't find other suitable shells. I keep plenty empty shells in my tank and I don't see my hermits bother snails at all.

I kept my inverts well fed and they had plenty of empty shells. I kid you not.. I sat and watched them kill snails, get in their shells... just to get pulled out of that shell by another crab moments later. I would have to dissagree with your assessment. IMHO

[Lake75]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=8328458#post8328458 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by antjefferson
I kept my inverts well fed and they had plenty of empty shells. I kid you not.. I sat and watched them kill snails, get in their shells... just to get pulled out of that shell by another crab moments later. I would have to dissagree with your assessment. IMHO
I was talking about blue leg hermits. Should have stressed that. Sorry... I had only 3 scarlet hermits in my tank. All of my snails are smaller than them (astraea, nassarius, and cerith) and the scarlets don't kill them for shell... A few months back when I transferred my 30 gal into a 75 gal, I counted all my critters: Over the ~15 months when they lived together, I lost 6 astraea out of 28, 1 nassarius out of 7, and 2 cerith out of 12. Pretty reasonable numbers since they die anyway. I had 33 blue legs and 3 scarlet... I'm not trying to prove you wrong and I've read here that a lot of people complained about their hermits eating snails. I don't know why. Guess I'm just lucky...

[hatebreed]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=8328452#post8328452 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by antjefferson
I just hunted out and removed every scarlet hermit from my tank as well as my sand star... and replaced them with nas snails. My cleanup crew now consists of just 20 nas snails, 3 emerald crabs, 2 brittle stars, and about 15 electric blue hermits. so far so good. I got tired of the scarlet hermits (which had gotten quite large) eating my snails and sporting their shells!

-tony

Emeralds can be a problem too IMO. I just had to evict my lone Emerald for picking pieces off of one of my clams.

Anyway, I'm also not sure about scarlets killing snails just for the shell. I've seen one of my scarlets kill multiple snails and he has yet to take a shell. He seems to just like eating them.

[xtrstangx]

Trade ALL crabs into the LFS..