Hermit or not to Hermit?

[fijiwigi]

I started with hermits but now have zero my snails got ate by the hermits since I got rid of hermits I have not had a snail death. And snails are more beneficial to me IMO than hermits were. Also with the Coral Banded Shrimp being aggressive I got me a cleaner shrimp he is just as cool to watch. Everyone that comes to my house always compliments how cool the $19.99 cleaner shrimp is and don't say much about my $300 worth of coral except when they look at my torch coral and say that anemone is cool LOL

 

[roka64]

I agree with figi. Check out cleaner shrimp and fire shrimp. I love the pistol shrimp/shrimp goby combo too.

 

[want2findnemo]

Thanks a lot everyone... I'll look more into the cleaner shrimp

Can u mix zebra with scarlet hermits?

 

[ryshark]

I started with hermits but now have zero my snails got ate by the hermits since I got rid of hermits I have not had a snail death. And snails are more beneficial to me IMO than hermits were. Also with the Coral Banded Shrimp being aggressive I got me a cleaner shrimp he is just as cool to watch. Everyone that comes to my house always compliments how cool the $19.99 cleaner shrimp is and don't say much about my $300 worth of coral except when they look at my torch coral and say that anemone is cool LOL

I get the same thing with my torch and toadstool. The people who have no clue about coral seem to always like the coral that move with the current. But thinking back, torch, toadstool and hammer were some of my first corals. Now I like the other more colorful (although maybe smaller) stuff better.
As far as inverts I have a few scarlet hermits that seem to leave my Turbo, Astrea, nassarius and margaritas alone. I used to have about 6-ceriths which all died, but I never saw a scarlet hermit crab messing with them.

 

[want2findnemo]

Decided to not go with the CBS and get one cleaner and one blood.

Went to the LFS to check them out, they like actually jump onto fish and start cleaning them.

Way cool...

 

[Patroklos]

Hermits are scavengers, and go for the easy meal. If there is enough stuff laying around for them to pick at they will leave your snails alone (unless one is just making itself an unusually easy target). Through in some slightly larger empty shells for the hermits to use when they grow, if not they go all armed robbery on a snail.

 

[pat8you]

I guess i will go against what people have said so far. I keep blue leg hermits and i like them quite a bit. The seem to be a bit less picky then snail. They will eat just about anything where as the snails seem to like certain things and can starve if they run out of their favorite foods. I still have lots of different snails, not saying don't get any. The blue legs stay real small even more so then the scarlets so they never really get big enough to bother any of your fish. I don't have AS MANY problems with them bothering my snails. The snails have to be turned over for quite a while before the blue legs get around to bothering them. As far as anything besides the little blue leg hermits i'm not a fan for all reasons other people have already brought up. This is just my limited experience with them though.