[StirCrazy]

you know.. I have been reading how many people are against hermits, but I have made a few observations over the last 8 years about them and snails. now this is just what I have seen or concluded and not nessasarly fact, but ....

what I have decided is they don't kill snails but rather take out the ones that are dieing anyways. I have come to this conclusion as I used to have a ton of hermits of a few different types, I like watching them and the little blue legged ones do an amazing job of eating algae off the rocks if you have enough, but I noticed snaills were dieing off. thinking it was the hermits eating them I went on a campaine to remove the hermits. I went from about 50 or 60 to about 3 and added a bunch more snaills. the snaills then dies off at the same rate even though the hermit numbers were only a fraction of the previous numbers. so after removing the last of the hermits I added a bunch more snails.. same result.

for the next 5 years I looked at the life span of different types od snails and decided the only ones I will now buy are asteria, and mexican red turbos (if I need them) I found regular turbos are buldozers, margerita snaills just die for no reason and quickly. frome reading I have found they are actualy a colder water snail and this may be why. but I have found all snails seam to have a higher death rate than other things we put in our tank, but because they are cheep we just buy more.

so over the years I have decided that the hermits arn't killing the snails only culling out the already dieing ones, which is a bonus as the dying snail is eaten quickly and can't polute the tank.

so in my opinion hermit crabs are ok.

Steve