Hermit Crab Babies

fishy55599

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Right so i have about 50 hermit babies in a tub from last night, they are still alive.
Will they survive on the stuff in the water to feed them, so then they might grow?
 
Copying my response over regarding difficulty to raise larvae in case anyone else is wondering:

That's a tough question to answer, since I'm not aware of any hobbyists or companies that have produced a surviving captive generation yet. I've only gotten larvae to transform once, and they were slaughtered straight away by other small crustaceans in the tank. My hypothesis has been that once larvae exist, a system similar to what works for cleaner family shrimp would have reasonable success (there's a book on that called something like "How to raise and Train Your Peppermint Shrimp"). Of course, I haven't had success with shrimp larvae yet either lol. Even those are pretty tricky without a lot of resources to devote to the process (money, multiple tanks, and lots of space). With hermits, getting them to actually pair up and produce larvae seems to be the bigger obstical.

Now back to this topic regarding feeding the larvae. First thing is are you sure these are hermit larvae? They look like a bit like mysid shrimp but smaller obviously and are attracted to light. The reason I bring this up is that there are many other small shrimp-like things that can show up in tanks all of a sudden and they are much easier to keep and can probably just be dumped back in the tank they hatched from (some will get eaten but they will have the best chance of finding food tehre too).

If they are hermit larvae, the water will NOT have the food they need in the average aquarium. As with shrimp larvae, you'll be looking at one of the following foods:
- live hatchling brine shrimp
- really finely chopped frozen foods like mysis and brine (will foul the water fast)
- something like cyclopeeze if these are from a large species of hermit (this is what I used in the past)

Minced cyclopeeze might work too for smaller species, but I don't know.
 
they are attracted to the light, i dont think i will be able to feed them, as i cannot spend money for a while.
what shall i do with them i really dont have any grow out tanks either
 
If you have no place to put them and nothing to feed them then they will starve pretty quickly. If you put them back in the main tank, they can always be food for other animals.
 

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