What Is The Purpose Of A Hermit Crab?

[alum]

i don't know what they do. do they clean parasites off of the rocks or something?

 

[bambam]

im talking out of experience, i ahd a problem with allergie growing on my rocks and the excess food falling on the rock and getting in the cracks, i bought hermit carbs, and they will go straight to the rock and for me they keep the rock looking its best, they eat pretty much anything you dont want on the rock. i highly recommend a good team of hermits, i have 15 white reef hermits and i need more so they can keep up especially on 110 lbs of rock

 

[alum]

im talking out of experience, i ahd a problem with allergie growing on my rocks and the excess food falling on the rock and getting in the cracks, i bought hermit carbs, and they will go straight to the rock and for me they keep the rock looking its best, they eat pretty much anything you dont want on the rock. i highly recommend a good team of hermits, i have 15 white reef hermits and i need more so they can keep up especially on 110 lbs of rock

thanks. now im definitely getting them

 

[n3ont3tra]

Some are aggressive, though, and will kill snails for their homes. The aggressive ones are Electric Blues, and blue tips. The most peaceful ones are Scarlet hermit crabs.

 

[AK77]

Hermit crabs are just like little janitors and basically go around the tank scavenging for food sources. These range from missed food, dead critters, algae to fish poop .

Different species eat different types of algaes, some eating a broader spectrum of the stuff than others. As others have said, you have to watch out for the more aggressive species. I have a mix of red legs, electric blues, blue tri-colours, algae hermits and some other one with a big claw lol. If they don't have enough to eat, they will tend to start hunting as opposed to scavenging and you'll see snails disappearing and maybe even fish if the crab is large enough.

I keep a lot of shells in the tank so that the hermits have a choice of homes to upgrade to. Of course this is no guarantee against them attacking your snails or each other, but so far I havent had any problems like that.