Help! hermitcrabs snuck home w/seashells collected from beach!

lilleahseafreak

lilleahseafreak

New member
i was just in the bodega bay area today and as usuall i went beach combing for seashells, drift wood, and such. i found a pile of snail shells and scooped them up to take home for arts-n-crafts. well when i got home i realized one of the shells in my bucket was moving! and on closer inspection realized 3 shells were not empty. i feel so bad, usually i check all my shells to be sure there is not a crab or live snail inside.......
i have them in a bucket with a live rock and a bubbler and i gave them some pellets which they all loved.

one crab has white and black legs
the other two have brown legs with blue stripes and red antenna, to me they look just like the blue leg hermits you buy at stores....
all 3 are quite small

i would just take them back and let them go but but i only get to go to the beach once, maybe twice a year, and if we do go back to the beach this year its not going to be for a long time....

soooo.....

i was wondering can i just throw these guys in my tank?

i am not too worried about them introducing some paracite since alot of the things we buy for our tanks (like live rock) come from the wild ocean. my main concern is will they eat my corals?

if they cannot be added to my tank then i am not sure what to do with them, besides set up a small tank and keep them till i go back....


so what do you guys think? is it too risky to just add these stowaways to my tank? or are all hermit crabs the same?
 
I usually collect a few every time i go to the beach and i've never had any problems. Throw them in the tank and forget about them.

Matt
 
I would think that they would die in a reef tank. Reef tanks are kept around 80F whereas Bodega Bay is around 50-55F year round. I would guess that they won't last long in your tank. But if you do nothing, they would die. So either way - it might be your only shot.
 
I second Mihn's thoughts.
But hey it's worth a shot..

Perhaps they will be able to deal with the difference in temps..
Who knows.
 
slowly move the temp up in the tank you have them in. So they have time to adjust to the difference. It may help it may not.
 
Nuuze-i had no idea where fairfield was at the time, i am not very knowlegeable about locations (and at times i think i am directionally impared :p i knew it was not too far out of sac but in my mind thought fairfield was in the foot hills)
when i saw a sign for fairfield though i was pretty dissapointed because we could have picked up the brain on the way home!

has ducumis come to pick up his things? i was gonna try and see if he'd do me a huge favor and pick up the brain for me....
 
With things collected in tide pools, even though they are from cold waters, can survive in a reef tank. With the huge fluctuations in small tide pools, temps can get to the 90s in the smaller pools. I had a few hermits in my fuge that I got from tide pools that lived for a few years.
 
Jedininja -

There could be a huge difference between tolerating temperature fluctuation for a short period of time vs living in a "high" temperature environment for an indefinite amount of time.

BTW - if those hermits survive, I might have to start collecting hermits from Monterey for my reef tank. ;-)

Minh
 
In most cases, I would agree with you. But there are some cases where things can actually live in higher than normal temps. From personal experience, I had hermits live in my first reef tank, then was tranfered to my sump when I upgraded a year and half or two years later. I lost track of them after that, but if they didnt die after that amount of time from higher temps, I would consider that being able to live in the higher temps.

I also had snails and other crabs from my early reefing days, and of course thaose died within a few weeks, but IME, hermits are hardy enough to make the transition.
 
Well I dont know about diving. Just the ones living in tide pools. Of course, I cant say whether they are reef safe, which is why they eneded up in my sump. Plus if I remember correctly what Gresham was saying, Reef Nutrition's tigger pods are collected locally as well and make the transition.
 
i put them in and they seem active and happy, once they hit the sand they instantly began to forage for goddies and one found a leftover pellet from this mornings feeding.
i think they will be fine.

however on the idea of collecting them on purpose::: i don't want to burst anyones bubble, but it may be against the law. i am sure that removing any crabs from point reyes would be illegle since its a national park (i know its a $1000 fine for removing even a naturally shed elk antler from the park) and i am pretty sure Monterey is a protected seashore.

but there may be places we could take some and be okay, so long as we only take a few crabs and not hoard them. (i figure 6 or 8 would be eaten in a single day alone, so why not bring 7 home?)

i mean with these 3 crabs its nice to have a living momento of my trip scurring around in my tank
 
Collecting hermits is ok as long as you have a fishing license. Just don't do it in a state park or wildlife preserve. I have personally collected many hermits from tide pools south of Half Moon bay at a small beach called Bean Hollow. My last reef 2 years ago had at least 30 hermits that i collected, acclimated slowly (over 2 hours) and they were model citizens that lived for many years. I also collected snails (looked like astria) from the tide pools that actually seems to have a better survival rate than the hermits. However YMMV.

Matt
 
I was wondering about that. I'm going tide pooling in a couple weeks with my kids. I'll pick a few up and see how they do.
 
so, the crabs "snuck" home with you in the shells you collected from the beach, huh... hmm. seems as though someone is deflecting a little personal responsibility here.
anyway, as noted above, you never know what you're introducing in your tank by adding wild caught specimens, disease and carnivorous tendencies being just a few of the potential problems. I know that you didn't collect them intentionally, but to those that are considering doing so, is the risk really worth saving the one or two dollar per crab pricetag common at most LFS? It's not as if hermits are hard to come by. And at least, at the LFS, you know what you're getting yourself in to...
 
for those of you getting hermit crabs try getting some macro algae too, it would be neat to see if any kind of seaweed from the beach would survive in a reef as i feel what we can buy is kinda limited.
it may survive since certain kinds are fully exposed to the sun at low tide and such.
 
I have seen all too well what washes up on our beaches here, and I think you would be crazy to put that stuff in your reef system. I would imagine macro algae from a local tide pool would be infested with things (living and otherwise) that you would probably be best not dealing with. JMO :)
 
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