Hermits vs Conchs

I have a few species of hermits in my tank- Scarlets, Halloween, red legs, electric blue. On Sat I decided to get buy 2 tiger conch form my LFS. Sunday morning when I woke up there was a mucus film in my tank and my electric blue chasing one of my conchs. Sunday night after the game I came home and a conch was ripped out of his shell being eaten by a scarlet.

Are the hermits going to be aggressive towards my other conch? I have one baby fighting conch that they leave alone, why would they go after the large ones?

Thanks.

 

Most hermits have aggressive tendancies and often are only killing the inverts because they think they want the shell. When often they will go so far as to kill the invert, inspect the shell, and leave it to waste.

 

I have had this happen as well accept my electirc blue hermit actaul killed my conch and now resides in the conchs old shell. Needless to say I took the hermit out and no longer keep any large hermits.

 

Maybe I should buy a few shells to throw in there?

Stupid hermits...

 

My conchs did more work in 2 days then all of my hermits did in a year! Are there any benefits to hermits if I have the conchs? All they do is kill things with shells.

I think I may get rid of all but the Halloween sense he seems the nicest.

 

They'll still kill the conch for its shell.

 

When you freshly introduce snails they get stressed out and give off a scent that is similar to dead snails. The hermits will believe it is injured and attempt to eat it.

Snails are better cleaners IME but hermits have funnier antics imo.

please excuse wrong words, I posted this from my phone that auto "corrects."

 

I had a conch for a while and it did just fine then next thing ya know a bunch of crabs were eatin it... do you think they attacked and killed it off... I thought it just died

 

Yes they will. I've lost 2 conchs to hermits - I ended up getting rid of all my hermits, I no longer keep any.

agreed.

 

I just add extra shells to my tank and so far so good