somthing killing scarlet reef hermist
 

i started out with 14 reef hermits in my 29 gallon aquarium, i bought them on the 9th. now i only have 6. there are a bunch of empty shells in there and i have seen some dead bodies which get eaten up by somthing (like an emerald crab) after a little while. currently i have 10 astrea turbo snails, 3 emerald crabs, 1 yellow colonial polyp, 1 green star polyp, 1 ocellaris clown fish (black and white) and i just got rid of 10 jumbo nassarius snails i had in my tank that i thought were killing the scarlets.

my tank parameters are fine.

any thoughts on what could be killing them?


also..
the temperature in the tank during the day is about 78 degrees Fahrenheit and 76 at night. the change in temp is because of the lights. could the temperature fluctuations kill them?

thanks

If your sure their really dead and not just molting, my guess would be they are either in poor health or can't find bigger shells?

thats a good point, maybe they couldnt find bigger shells, but even now that there are a bunch of shells laying around (which could have been the larger hermits dying off) the hermits i still have are dying.

thanks though

Are you sure it's not hermits killing Astrea snails? I keep two extra shells per hermit in my tanks, and I haven't lost a hermit or astrea yet (going on four months). Or it could be a hermit killing the other hermits, which isn't uncommon. Is there plenty of food for them?

Nassarius snails won't kill hermits. I don't think they could if they wanted to. That is quite a few hermits for that size tank though; I stocked 2 scarlets and 6 blue legs for my 34g, and it seems to be a good fit. The scarlets have gotten BIG and hungry.

Also, what kind of water are you using? RO/DI? Copper will destroy your hermits even at the smallest amounts.

im using tap water ( i know, i know). im saving up for an RO unit. but i have mechanical filtration thats removing phosphates and all that bad stuff, and i got my water tested 2 days ago and it had no copper.

I have witness my hermit pull another hermit out of its shell and take over. The loser w/o a shell was visited by my wrass and the back end was devoured. The weird thing is I too also had over twenty shells on the sand bed but for some reason they rather bully one another for the shell. I guest its survival of the fittest.

I can never keep track of my hermits. LOL!!!

losing hermits
 

Seems like a large cleanup crew for a small tank and load. I had a similar experience and had one of my local LFS workers come over to look at my tank. After grounding probes and nitrate sponges(even though all parameters were good). He took one look at my 65 gallon tank and said they were starving to death nothing to eat. Although I feed my tank heavily every other day. HE proved it by placing a frozen cube of food under an overhang and in minutes every hermit and snail in the tank was headed towards the food. He explained that initially our tanks go through an algae stage were there is plenty to eat for all. But gradually with good husbandry this susides and we no longer need that large of a clean up crew. I personally am down to 2 large nassiruss,4astreas,6nerites and 4 hermits and my tank is spotless. If you take care of your tank you do not need the large clean up crew as advertised.

The only time I had trouble keeping hermits and snails was when my nitrates were high. I also had better luck with them when I began to dose iodine for my shrimp. This has benefits for all critters that molt an exoskeleton. It may be beneficial for hermits, but I don't think its needed.