Murder in the tank!

[jamesd28]

So I was just looking at my tank and happened to witness a murder! It appeared as if one of my hermits was harassing the other one and managed to get him out of his shell. Instantly my cleaner shrimp attacked and locked up the loose crab in his legs/arms/tentacles and has been attempting to eat him for the past 10-15 minutes.

If the crab is not consumed I will obviously remove the body, but I am unsure if what has happened will cause an ammonia spike anyways?

 

[Spartachris]

How cool, in a brutal kind of way. How big is your tank? In my 55 I had a small beauty angel die and get consumed without my tank even registering a blip. No spikes of any kind.

 

[jamesd28]

Your right, in a brutal kind of way, it was kind of cool haha. Especially to witness the whole process. My tank is a 14G BioCube. The hermit crab that was killed, however, is very small. The shrimp is still working on him haha. Not sure if he will consume all of him or leave part of his body

 

[slitherbomb]

My cleaner shrimp are very bold. I feed my snowflake eel frozen prawn, and they will literally go up to it and take some pieces away from it.

 

[jamesd28]

Wow that is bold! haha. So do you think I should be ok in terms of avoiding an ammonia spike?

 

[slitherbomb]

For a small hermit crab? It won't cause any spike since it's so small.

 

[jamesd28]

Alright, thanks. That's what I was thinking, but wanted to make sure since I'm new to saltwater.

My other hermit harassing it is what caused all of this. My girlfriend thinks the harassing hermit has outgrown his shell and was trying to take the other ones shell. Is this something that I need to be worried about? Will he go after my snails which have much larger shells?

 

[slitherbomb]

Yes they will. You should get some bigger snails and scatter them throughout the tank so they can upgrade the shell.

 

[MikeYQM]

I had the same thing happen last week. Larger hermit had just molted & was hiding when a smaller hermit found him, pulled his claws off then pulled him out of this shell & dropped him off the ledge.

He bolted for a crevasse in the rock but my Nas snails were on him within minutes. Funny thing, there are a lot of shells the crab could have taken rather than evict this one.

 

[Grizz]

Alright, thanks. That's what I was thinking, but wanted to make sure since I'm new to saltwater.

My other hermit harassing it is what caused all of this. My girlfriend thinks the harassing hermit has outgrown his shell and was trying to take the other ones shell. Is this something that I need to be worried about? Will he go after my snails which have much larger shells?

Yes he will. All my hermits rock designer shells go to a craft store and pick up a bag wash them well and drop em in. i hide my pile of shells behind my rock