Hermit crabs? Pro or Con?

[Lorenz725]

I love mine in my reef and just deal with them knocking stuff over. I got many different kinds and like them all. Blue leg, red leg, scarlet, halloween, blue neon striped, and some i dont have an ID on. I just think it all depends on if you like them or not. I get way more enjoyment with them to get ride of them over knocking over corals or eating a snail every once in awhile. IMO when it comes to fish, corals, shrimp, and hermits it all just depends on what you like. Some people will like one thing and others will hate them that is why I love this hobby no reef is the same.

 

[rambochu]

I love mine in my reef and just deal with them knocking stuff over. I got many different kinds and like them all. Blue leg, red leg, scarlet, halloween, blue neon striped, and some i dont have an ID on. I just think it all depends on if you like them or not. I get way more enjoyment with them to get ride of them over knocking over corals or eating a snail every once in awhile. IMO when it comes to fish, corals, shrimp, and hermits it all just depends on what you like. Some people will like one thing and others will hate them that is why I love this hobby no reef is the same.

+1

I mean, we have a mantis shrimp forum - they deal with not keeping anything too valuable with the mantids all the time, and they love it.

 

[Chris27]

So I hope you have coral eating butterflys, Parrotfish and large angels in your reef tank as well, since mother nature put all the coral preditors on natural reefs.

I do have a large angel and a butterfly (Lamarck/Copperband), but the tank is a little small for a parrot, should I go for a juvenile black tip reef shark instead?

Sure there are predators around a reef, but a hermit crab is far from one. They can overtake snails and walk across corals causing mild irritation, but I feel their pro's far outweigh their cons.

Snails do a fine job aerating a sand bed, and they can clean the surface of a rock quite well, but there are a great deal of other nooks and crannies in a reef where snails just can't reach. Hermits move quickly and are voracious eaters which results in them mowing down hair and turf algea far better and faster then a snail. And let's not forget about their ability to seek out large pieces of meaty food that fish miss....which you don't get with snails given that most are herbivores.

 

[mess7777]

I have about 40 in my 110 gallon. I do like them, and they don't cause any problems. However, I am not sure they do all that much. They are constantly eating, but they don't touch algae, and my rocks still have a lot of crud when i blast them. They must be eating something off those rocks, but it's smaller than I can see.

 

[RJT]

I had eighty in my 110g because I had an algae bloom. Several months later I still had an algae problem. I got a group of snails and my algae problem went away. Until the hermits ate a lot of the snails.