blue legged hermit crab?

are they good and if so i was thinking a small tiny one. and can i also add a cleaner shrimp or will they kill each other off in a battle royal?

 

Hermits are good little clean up crews and dont really interact with shrimp. you must acclimate them slowly (drip method) as they are both very sensitive to changes in water parameters.

 

I have red-tipped hermits and they are awesome to watch and are peaceful towards my snails. They are a great part of my CUC as they eat algae, some food that drops (if my Nassarius snails don't get it first) and they dig/sift my sand bed. I have been debating on getting more because I like them so much Red and Blue tipped hermits are very closely related.

 

Greeat little cleaners I have about 30-40 of them. They will need new shells as they grow. I get mine (shells) from the beach. Boil them in water (shells not the snails) and drop them in the tank for use later. I also have a cleaner shrimp. No problems.

 

crap i just let the bag float for like 15 min the poured in a little bit of water to the bag and let it float for another 15 then dropped him in. i hope he doesnt die. :-( its my first critter i purchased aside from a tiny snail i found on a piece of live rock. now i feel bad. i want to get maybe 1 more blue and 2 red. and see if my lfs gives me a few of the empty shells in the tanks. if not where can i get some from the one i put in today is like 1/4" or smaller

 

He won't be happy. I let mine drip acc. for an hour or so that way they won't go into shock and die.

I ordered my shells from reefcleaners.org

The shells he sends are clean, inexpensive and come in an array of different sizes. My hermits love them and one moved into a BEAUTIFUL white shell.

 

awww man there goes $1.50 lol. how do i drip acclimate? i just know you have to do it in a separate container. i was planning on buying a 2.5 gallon tank to do it with all the livestock i get and after im done adding livestock keep it as a hospital tank.

 

1.50? Dang, my LFS sells the red tipped ones for .99

I have a bucket where I put mine in. Then I have air tubing that has 2 different valves on it for better drip control. So one part of the tubing goes in the aquarium, valve then another piece of tubing, valve and the last piece of tubing that leads into the bucket. Different people have different drip rates per the critter they are acclimating. I do 1-2 drips per a sec for an hour or so. The water they are in needs to be closely matched to the aquarium water so they don't go into shock and die. Pick the critter up and place into aquarium slowly. You don't want to added the LFS water into yours as you have no idea what is in it.

Hope this helps.

 

thanks man. net time ill know better. i learned not to add water from the lfs which was petsmart when i had my 20gl freshwater tank got my fish sick they all died i got scared and redid my whole tank with new gravel, decorations, filter biowheel and wat not. new cycle and never got fish from there again only supplies i needed. yeah thats what i hate about the lfs i got my crab from the overprice their fish but the awesome thing is that they always have better prices on the equipment they sell. im going to go to the awesome lfs that has a freakin 3000 gallon shark pond where they have better prices on livestock Aquatica Tinley Park: Your Aquarium Specialist)

 

i forgot to mention the red ones are 3.00