are electric blue leg hermits reef safe?

[Exotic_Reefer99]

i was at the lfs and they had 2 electric blue leg hermits but they told me these were not reef safe. Every site ive looked at says reef safe..
Whats the deal..ppl at the store dont know what theyre sayin?

 

[jdieck]

There is no really reef safe hermit. The safer will be the scarlet hermits.

 

[Exotic_Reefer99]

What corals do hermits harm most often..if they are picky? I have quite a few small blue leg and scarlet hermits in my 12g and I have not noticed any damage. They do pick on my suncoral though..esp while feeding. Would a blue leg be more likely to do damage because of his larger size? Anyone out there who has had an electric blue leg?

 

[jdieck]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=9326430#post9326430 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by Exotic_Reefer99
What corals do hermits harm most often..if they are picky? I have quite a few small blue leg and scarlet hermits in my 12g and I have not noticed any damage. They do pick on my suncoral though..esp while feeding. Would a blue leg be more likely to do damage because of his larger size? Anyone out there who has had an electric blue leg?

I do not think they particularly damage any sps. May pick on some polyps though but most of the damage I have seen from blues is their tendency to kill snails for their shell and feed on small inverts

 

[Exotic_Reefer99]

I am not really worried about the hermits killing snails as I have watched it happen before. But I like to watch them chase the snails. I have xtra shells in the tank in hopes they use those first but if not oh well get a few xtra snails.

Just got a blue tort and was wondering would they harm sps or any specific type cause Ive got lps, zoas, and now a piece of sps.

 

[jdieck]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=9326607#post9326607 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by Exotic_Reefer99
I am not really worried about the hermits killing snails as I have watched it happen before. But I like to watch them chase the snails. I have xtra shells in the tank in hopes they use those first but if not oh well get a few xtra snails.

Just got a blue tort and was wondering would they harm sps or any specific type cause Ive got lps, zoas, and now a piece of sps.

Most hermits tand to spend the night crawled over corals for protection but I have not seen this causing any damage to the coral.

 

[REEFRHEAD]

I have an electric blue in my reef and hes fine quite a good mover at night drugint he day he hides late at night right around when the mhs go out he comes out looking for food and such last night i watched him do sume awesum sand sifting id say the most id ever seen a hermit do. doesnt bother my polyps or mushrooms or sps;s also a friend has a huge one in his reef full of polyps and lps so im sure they r find except course for the snails devouring thing but thats normal if there isnt enough food in the tank or he likes the shell of course.

 

[chem-e]

I have an electric blue and the only damage he does is knock over my frags because of his size. It's a cool hermit, but it knocking over my frags is giving me a reason to find it a new home.

 

[kmk2307]

I had two electric blue leg hermit crabs in my reef and I knew they were eating snails but I thought that's all they were doing so I let them be since they had pretty well decimated all of my large snails (I only had a couple) and were ignoring the very small sp. I also noticed that some zoanthids never did well in my tank and new zoanthids after being introduced often died off. When I bought more snails I moved the hermits to my chaetomorpha algal filter and now snails are doing well and to my surprise, my zoanthids are growing very well now. They are beautiful and interesting but somewhat destructive. If you really want hermits I would get very small ones and just a couple. I have never observed the "zebra" hermit crabs doing anything I didn't want them to.

HTH,
Kevin

 

[Exotic_Reefer99]

i saw that he could kill small inverts, will he kill a sexy shrimp?

 

[kmk2307]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=9342363#post9342363 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by Exotic_Reefer99
i saw that he could kill small inverts, will he kill a sexy shrimp?

probably, yes.