Please identify these two things and tell me why my hermits are in a ball...

K

kfennell

In Memoriam
I have three pictures of things that I don't recognize.


The first is a small blob beside my anemone, looks like it split maybe? But its tiny, I didn't expect something like this.

DSC01592.jpg


Second is a Clam I think, its clam shaped, colorful and has little tentacles sticking out like a flame scallop... I didn't buy it so it came in on the rock I guess. I couldn't get a good picture where it is

DSC01595.jpg


Last is a ball of hermit crabs, they are all balled up at the opening to the goby/shrimps hole. This is 1 day after I moved the tank from a 10g to a 20h, Possibly there was no food in the tank for them since I moved the live sand to the sump and put new sand in the tank?

DSC01583.jpg


Thanks in advance for any help.
 
I dunno. You got me stumped and the pics are hard to decipher on my iPhone

BUT

That last picture of the hermie huddle is one of the weirdest things I have seen in a long time with regard to animal behavior in our tanks. Kind of spooky!

Tagging along
 
I just moved everything fron one tank to the other the day before, shaking out the rocks as I went, the only possibility there is that my missing for 4 weeks cleaner shrimp was just newly discovered. It wouldn't have been buried in the sand though like where the hermits were... That is what i figured it was too though, could it have been a dead hermit? or a small nassarius? On that note, Im not 100% sure I remember moving both the snails I had so one of the big ones could have died.
 
The first picture looks like your anemone reproduced through budding and that is the result. The hermits look like they are eating something. Maybe move them and see if there is anything dead there?
 
I'll go in a different direction on the first one, could be a type of mushroom that wasn't getting any light. When I moved my rock around I found a couple of mushrooms that looked just like that. After some time in the light the color started coming back.

The hermit ball I agree with the fact that something died. Could be something simple that you don't see all the time like a peanut worm or other critter that came on the live rock. Heck...it could be one of your hermits.
 
This was a few days ago, i never saw any signs of something dead, and the shrimp and goby still use that hole... i dunno?
 
if the shrimp and goby are still alive then the move probably caused your shrimp to molt and the hermits were balled up eating the molt.
 
Do the hermits leave this ball and return to it or do they just stay like that? I had hermits in a frag tank that used do do that every once in a while. It always seemed that the smaller hermits would gather around my big hermit. What kind of hermits are they. Mine were all zebra hermits. Interested to know what everyone thinks.
 
When I first added some hermits to my tank, they would roam around the tank during the day, but in the morning when I checked on it before I left for work, they were all huddled up together in a corner like that. They stopped after about a week.
 
<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=14106456#post14106456 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by lowman31
Do the hermits leave this ball and return to it or do they just stay like that? I had hermits in a frag tank that used do do that every once in a while. It always seemed that the smaller hermits would gather around my big hermit. What kind of hermits are they. Mine were all zebra hermits. Interested to know what everyone thinks.
Click to expand...

No, ive never seen it before or since.
 
The second picture does look like a little scallop of some sort. It is a pretty difficult place to get a good picture of, but I had a couple of shells that looked like that attached to some of my LR. There was nothing in them, but their shells were shaped like that.
 
My hermits do the same thing. We noticed it about two weeks ago shortly after we introduced our two mated maroon clownfish. We figured that it could be eating their eggs but we have never been able to confirm. Happen to have a mated pair in your tank?
 
My hermits gather in a small "dead spot" in the tank under a live rock arch where detritus accumulates after a feeding.

There are usually five or six of them in there fighting over whatever scraps fall in. As far as I can tell they are doing their job.
 
<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=14108476#post14108476 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by sara615
My hermits do the same thing. We noticed it about two weeks ago shortly after we introduced our two mated maroon clownfish. We figured that it could be eating their eggs but we have never been able to confirm. Happen to have a mated pair in your tank?
Click to expand...

Unlikely a maroon would let a hermit get close enough to eat the eggs.
 
I also support that hermits sometimes do this, and it isn't necessarily about surrounding something that is dead.

My hermits regularly cluster like this. I call it my "hermit hotel". They have a certain coral head that they all seem to return to during daylight, while roaming around at night.
 
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