Hermits

[Morri]

I have just been to my LFS they have a choice of Halloween, Blue and Red legged.

I was just wondering which would be best for my 125L reef tank as a general clean up crew? and how many of each?

Thanks Morri

 

[xxBarneyxx]

Personally I would say none of them Have had hermits in all of my tanks and while they are good for getting rid of uneaten food they also have the habit of killing snails and each other. If there are plenty of shells for them the blue legged ones are probably best. The problem is that hermits are not very well identified in your LFS and "red legged" hermits could be 1 of 100's of species some will be fine and others are more destructive.

Personally I would go for a mixture of snails, turbos, ceriths and nassarius snails (if you have a sand bed).

Hermits are fun to watch though so if you want them get them for the interest factor and not for useful CUC.

 

[Donya]

I have just been to my LFS they have a choice of Halloween, Blue and Red legged.

I was just wondering which would be best for my 125L reef tank as a general clean up crew? and how many of each?

Thanks Morri

If you get hermits for a tank that size, get ONE type, not some of each. Otherwise you'll be gambling with species compatability.

The problem is that hermits are not very well identified in your LFS and "red legged" hermits could be 1 of 100's of species some will be fine and others are more destructive.

Although in some sense that's true in that there are a lot of species with red legs, I wouldn't say the average "red legged" hermit from an LFS is that hard to ID...most things that go under "red legged" in the aquarium trade seem to fall into only a handful of species. Paguristes cadenati are the main ones, with Clibanarius erythropus and Clibanarius digueti getting the name less commonly. That's going off of what I've seen of both US LFSs and reports & pics of UK LFS stocks - there could be some common ones in the UK I haven't seen, and of course oddball shipments of hermits do happen sometimes. The important thing is to ID them in advance to know what to expect before they're in the bag ready to be taken home.

 

[Kovatch]

Get Halloween,

Only Because of the name.

HAHAH!

 

[SkiFletch]

Agree with Barney, I'm not a real big fan of Hermits in a mixed reef tank. Too aggressive and sometimes too opportunistic for me.