local hermit crab, will I drown him?

[ShagMan]

All,

I may get flamed for this, but ohwell, here goes... I picked up a few of these guys at my local tidepool-type area... some were out of water, some were in water (mostly in)... will these guys drown if I put them in the aquarium?? I picked up some interesting local fish too, but I'll post about that later on. Attached should be a picture.

 

[davelin315]

Looks like a generic hermit crab to me that will do fine fully submerged. There are not that many hermits that are unable to be submerged full time, and I would guess that if those were them, they wouldn't have been in the water at all.

 

[ShagMan]

Well, I have about 30 of them, and they did just fine in my mostly-empty 29G last night, so hooray! They're VERY active, and kinda on the large size for aquariums though. Do people have problems getting hermit crabs of this sort in inland areas? I can pick up 50-100 of them in an evening's time, they're all over the place; I actually had troubles trying to find empty extra shells for the ones I got, every one had a hermit crab in it

 

[Jerry Gonzales]

Hi Josh, One thing that I would worry about is if these hermits will be safe for your reef tank. Long time ago I had a hermit in my 30g reef tank. I was happy to get him till he started ripping through my LR. He looked like the tazmanian devil in there. He went back to the fish store asap.

 

[AnotherGoldenTeapot]

I collected all of my hermits (*cough* all three of them) and all of the snails in my 150gal locally (in New Zealand).

They're all doing fine in the somewhat warmer water of my reef.

There are, for practical purposes, an infinte number available 10 min from where I live.

 

[ShagMan]

Wanna see some overcrowding of hermit crabs? Try THIS on for size