New at Everything

[Big MaC]

Hi. I am a Land Hermit Crab enthusist and have desided that it is time that I make there 5.5gallon pools as close to what they would have in the wild as possible... So I have desided to start a nano tank.

I will get a Reef Master Kit and test the water daylie as i have been using test strips for my tank.

I would like to stock my tank with 3 Sexy Shrimp and 2 Blue Legged Hermit Crabs. As well as some plant life...


Heres my questions:

1. Will the shrimp and hermit crabs get along?
2. Will the hermit crabs do a good enough job at the algae cleaning that i wont need ugly snails?
3. What kind of plant life can i get?

And Can you give me any tips you have? i need to do more research before i make the final step and buy but i think i have a pretty good idea of what i would like to get.

Here's a Pic of the Tank for beter understanding
http://i53.tinypic.com/kx6yo.jpg

[th08tu]

Hey that looks pretty cool. I think you will be ok with what you described, however maybe only one shrimp per tank? Also you need to get some flow in there (I couldn't tell if there was any from the pic) as sitting water in the saltwater world is just bad.

Things to watch out for is your salinity of the water becomes very important with the inverts. Also hermit crabs can be agressive as they grow, so I don't know how they would interact with what you already have in there.

As for plants, there aren't very many that grow in salt water, however there are a few. I'm not too familiar with them, but liveaquaria.com has some for sale, and provides a brief description of them.

[pat8you]

You will most likely still need a few snails to help with the algae. Crabs cannot get onto the glass to clean it. Also i have found that crabs are more scavengers then algae eaters. Their claws are not designed to get the film algae off rocks and thinks.

[Big MaC]

Ok good info. I will deffinatly keep that in mind..