Hermit acting wierd.

Ok....as most of you know, I'm trying to rebuild my tank from some mass destruction...

Anyway, I just bought two snails as "canaries in the coal mine" to see if my coper levels were ok. Now, before anyone gets mad about that, twice before, I got a snail and they did the "copper boogie", with nothing showing on the test.

So, I have a blue hermit (Blinky) that went right for one of the new snails and ate him out of his shell, took over the new digs and continued on his merry way.

The last few days, he's been switching back and forth from his new shell to his old shell about twice a day. What's up with that? Do I need to put a few more shells in there or do I have an indecisive crab?

 

Hermits, especially will attack a snail for its growth process and in efforts to find a new, larger home! I would get various size snail shells for this purpose, and the reduced chance of this happening again!

 

My Scarlet crabs seem to be pretty peaceful but I have noticed one walking around in one of my Margaretta snails old home....

 

I have all kinds of empty shells in the tank close to the size he has. Most are a little bigger.

It's the flip-flopping between shells I've never seen before.

Oh....I'm not upset about losing a snail to a crab. That's nature doing it's thing.

 

i've seen hermits doing this before as well, except it would be almost a constant switching for like 10 minutes. just back and fourth. i have no idea what to make of it.