pro/cons of hermits

[cgarr017]

i am just starting out with my first tank-75g reef and trying to gather info on a cleanup crew. what are the pros/cons of having hermits and essentially if it is a good idea to have them in the long run? i've heard mixed opinions about them. Also i need suggestions for complete cleanup crew.

[J. Montgomery]

Pro: They're good cleaners.

Con: May attack and kill other things in the tank like snails or other hermit crabs.

I personally have a very diverse cleanup crew, with multiple types of snails, hermits, crabs, and shrimp. Some people prefer to have two or three types of snails (like Astreas and Cerinth) and leave it at that.

[H2OLUVSME]

Hermits...
They eat sand bed fauna and they climb on corals. They will help cleaning up un eaten fish food and some of them eat certain types of algae.

I much prefer a diverse group of snails (nassarius, cerith, astrea, stomatella, etc..) as the main base of the CuC, but I also like having shrimp and emerald crabs.

[LPDK91]

I would stay away from them. The cons out way the pros imo.

[spinninmidwater]

IME
yes. my hermits clean up algae on rocks nicely especially when they were small BUT they seem to prefer more meat than veggie when they grow bigger. they killed snails for "shell shopping" or fun, who knows. they crawl over corals, irritate corals and steal corals' food fiercely. and gradually the biggest guy killed other hermits one by one and now end up i'm having only one toublesome electric blue hermit! then again, they are far more efficent than snails at cleaning up "grassy" rocks with their powerful chopping claws. but somehow i don't think i'd ever keep them again except for FOWLR tank. JMO

[mscarpena]

Mine always did celebratly hermit death match and killed eachother, but they are good algae eaters

[chrisstie]

I dont' have too many problems with my hermits but I've provided a lot of extra real estate for them (empty shells of varying sizes) and stick with the cortez mexican red leg hermit and scarlets. they seem to bother things much less than the blue legs or other species i've known

[KhawMengLee]

Pros: They eat everything.

Cons: They EAT everything.

[Grins]

I don't allow them in my reef anymore.

[ionredline0260]

I feed them to my octopus.

[Questionmarc]

my hermits ate all the purple allge off my rock... had to take them all out of the tank

[H2OLUVSME]

Originally posted by Questionmarc
my hermits ate all the purple allge off my rock... had to take them all out of the tank

Thats the first time Ive ever heard of them eating calcareous algae.

I've heard of urchins doing it many times, but hermits.....

[iamwhatiam52]

Keep just a few. keep only 3 small ones in my 180. Too many will scour everything interesting off your rock and harass your corals.

The exception is staghorn hermits. They stay on the sand and are VERY cool. The "staghorn" is actualy a hydroid colony.

[Sk8r]

I love them. I always have about 10, mostly scarlets, which have eaten far more bubble algae than my mithrax. I think they've eaten 10 whole bubbles.

They clean up at the edge of tissue necrosis and I think they actually help stop it. If they get healthy tissue---that's exactly what they need to do: you don't amputate and leave bad tissue at the edge.

They're so light they don't harm my sps, like digitata.

I supply them shells, so there no issue with the snails.

I do not buy hermits that get larger than 1/3" body diameter.

[natan]

Pros: cool buggers, add movement and diversity. May help get rid of some pest algae.
Cons: they crawl over corals, irritating them. can move and drop small frags on smallish rocks, and unattached frags get kicked arround. if not in a frag tank, i leke them. BTW some specimens are trouble makers (get rid of thaws) and some (not nesesarily the smallest species!) are much less trouble than otheres. i have a small troublemaker sp. and another totally harmless sp. more than twice the size. So research carefully.