Psycho Killer Hermit.

[Fingers68]

Got a new piece of corral on Saturday and as a bonus in the bag was a hermit crab with it. Blue legs with black bands, very nice I thought. Within 2 mins of being in the tank it was grappling with one of my other hermits, not knowing who started it I intervened and broke it up, thinking "give the lad a chance". 30 mins later I see a naked, claw less, dead hermit floating along the bottom then being snaffled by a cleaner shrimp and quickly devoured.! I then notice one of my hermits with a big unusual shell is now sporting some new socks!

Now this blue/black leg hermit was much smaller than the one it has murdered for its home and there are plenty of spare shells? As it was late I went to bed.

So next morning, here I find this psycho in a grapple with my best hermit, a big red with big claws.!! What the! In I went with the tongs, and it looked I was just in time, big red was cowering way back in his shell. I meen psycho had just killed the owner to move up to a bigger home, among a load of vacant homes? I think it just out to kill, KILL, KILL, mother.

It is now in the cooler, a sealed bucket of syphoned water from my last water change, if its still alive by the time I next go to the shop I will take it there.

 

[Truck]

Got a new piece of corral on Saturday and as a bonus in the bag was a hermit crab with it. Blue legs with black bands, very nice I thought. Within 2 mins of being in the tank it was grappling with one of my other hermits, not knowing who started it I intervened and broke it up, thinking "give the lad a chance". 30 mins later I see a naked, claw less, dead hermit floating along the bottom then being snaffled by a cleaner shrimp and quickly devoured.! I then notice one of my hermits with a big unusual shell is now sporting some new socks!

Now this blue/black leg hermit was much smaller than the one it has murdered for its home and there are plenty of spare shells? As it was late I went to bed.

So next morning, here I find this psycho in a grapple with my best hermit, a big red with big claws.!! What the! In I went with the tongs, and it looked I was just in time, big red was cowering way back in his shell. I meen psycho had just killed the owner to move up to a bigger home, among a load of vacant homes? I think it just out to kill, KILL, KILL, mother.

It is now in the cooler, a sealed bucket of syphoned water from my last water change, if its still alive by the time I next go to the shop I will take it there.

blue hermits can be buggers for killing other crabs, get rid is what i say

 

[jennybugs]

Blue knuckle hermits are reknown for wrestling other hermits and snails out of their shells so they can steal them, sadly. They are attractive but prone to dominating other hermits and sadly killing them for the shells.

I may be mistaken but even if you have lots of other shells in the tank, the blue knuckle is likely to go for shells already inhabited

 

[Jdubz]

bloody squatters!

 

[Donya]

This is why I advocate not mixing hermit species if you aren't 100% sure what species you're mixing and how they'll behave together. Tanks with mixed species tend to end up with this kind of aggression. Sometimes you get lucky and have a good combo and a happy tank, other times you'll have a war and it can be difficult to tell what caused the mess. Things like spare shell count, amount of available territory, and amount of food are enough variables to juggle with one species, let alone multiple species.

I made a similar mistake once myself when I "saved" a Calcinus seurati that had gotten both its arms removed by a larger member of the same species (by this time I hadn't yet learned that it's a fiercly territorial species). I dunked mr. arm-less in a tank with a bunch of Clibanarius erythropus and it dissappeared for a while. My erythropus proceeded to vanish in the following weeks. Surprise surprise, I had one much larger Calcinus seurati at the end that continued to put the beat down on everything else in the tank. Moral of story: don't add wildcard hermits to a happy tank unless you want to do an experiment in species interactions.