Scarlet Hermit Crab grow new shell

[BengBear]

Hi,
In my 50gallon tank, I had a number of scarlet hermit crabs and many had molted. However, recently I notice there were a few empty scarlet shells. I would had expected the scarlet hermit to have swap with any of those empty Nassarius snail shells, which I thrown in. None of the Nassarius shells were taken.

Question - Does scarlet hermit crab grow new shell?

 

[redox]

No they dont grow a new shell. But sometimes they stay inside their shell for a while after molting. They are real soft for a few days and are easy prey for some fish. Maybe that is the case here. Hopefully

 

[BengBear]

Thanx redox. I will wait, watch and hope for the best. Really love them, little scarlet, about 1/2 inch size roaming the tank over rocks in search of food and brown and red slime algae. Sometime brave ones tried scaling up vertical glass wall of my tank, covered with pink coralline algae.

 

[BengBear]

Hi Redox,
Assuming that molting scarlet hermit was preyed upon, the prime suspect would be the smaller cleaner shrimp added on 2Mar08, as empty hermit shell start happening around that time. Scarlet added on 14Jan08 same time as cleaner wrasse (abandon by some reefer in town), while all the other live stocks were already in the tank. From 14Jan till end Feb08, scarlet hermits molted and there wasn't any empty shell.

Live stock in the tank:
Angel- approx 4" emperor, 2" koran, 2" heraldi,
clown - approx 1" common clown x2, fire clown
Tangs - 3" domani, 2.5" Regal
Dottyback - 2" dottyback (with purple back)
Larger cleaner shrimp added 15Feb08

Do you think, smaller cleaner shrimp is the prime suspect?

 

[reef3r]

I think the dottyback is more likely.

 

[BengBear]

Hi reef3r,
Thanx for the reply. Just discussing, for about 1 and 1/2 months there was no empty shell incidence. Only started to happen after introduction of small shrimp (1" size), beginning of Mar08. Do you think there are other consideration? Open to suggestions.
BTW, 2 nassarius snails died after about a week. They were hard working and nice to look at, moving fast. I think, it is due to short acclimation time, 1 hour. My fault. It should have been 4 to 5 hours, some say 10hours, which I read about later.

 

[reef3r]

IMO ten hours is overkill. I acclimate most of my fish and inverts for one and a half hours and I have never had anything die to acclimation times. As long as salinity and temp match or are close they should be fine to go in the tank. It depends on how fast you drip the water in. I do it so it doubles about every half an hour.

How long has the tank been setup?

 

[BengBear]

Thank you for all advises. Tank setup since Feb07. Recalling all events:
At LFS, bcause we spotted some fishes had ick hence we rinsed the snails from that same tank with tap water. Pack them with water from another tank. Back home rinse them again with tap water b4 dripping main tank water into a small container with the snails. Drip rate was rather fast and it all lasted for about 1 hour. A sad thing.
Will try collect new one from another LFS. Rather difficult to find nassarius in this country.

 

[reef3r]

.... You rinsed the snails with tap water??? As in pure freshwater??

 

[BengBear]

Yes, it was my mistake. New to snail. Will avoid this.

 

[reef3r]

Okay, well, I guess you learned something. By the way, snails do not get ich.