Purpose of Hermit Crab

[whatcaneyedo]

When I first started up I followed the usual recommendations and added many different snails and crabs. But not because they were needed. Only because thats what I thought I was suppose to do. In general most of them didn't last long. The crabs would kill each other and some of the snails or get eaten themselves by my fish. The snails would get stuck in the rocks or fall upside down and die or just plain starve if I bought the wrong type. More and more I witnessed a hitch hiker cleanup crew emerge so I started to question what was the point in buying all of these things? So I stopped and now the bristle worms, mini brittle stars, mini turbos, pods, mysids, astrea stars and stomatella snails do most of the work. Whats left of my store-bought crews consists of 2 abalone, an astrea snail, 1 tuxedo and 1 rock boring urchin. Thats it and if you look in my Tank Journal you'll see that I do have a relatively large system with a high bioload.