Inverts that will never be put in my tank again

[fishytime]

Originally Posted by kien

So what I've read out of this thread is that these critters seem to all behave differently in everyone's tanks (no surprise I guess) :-) Just like that "hit-and-miss" fish (aka, flame angel, etc..). You can never know for sure how they will behave in your tank. Save for a mantis shrimp incident a long time ago, I haven't had any problems with any inverts that I have purposefully put in my tank. In fact, I love inverts and how they interact with one another. My list includes starfish (red reef, lenckia), an urchin, an army of hermits, 4 skunk cleaners, 2 fire shrimp, 2 peppermint shrimp, 3 sexy shrimp, acro crabs, a Porcelain crab, snails of various sorts. Heck, I even enjoy just sitting there watching abalone craw across rock work. I know I'm weird like that. Those little buggers are amazingly fast though... sometimes I think they race.

Im like you Kien.....I have a plethora of inverts in the tank....no shrimp anymore as my mystery wrasse finds them tasty....two tuxedo urchins, two fromia stars(Kien if your star is red, it is actually a fromia star, not a linkia....commonly mislabeled) pom pom crab(seen it once in a year), a bunch of different hermies,and an assortment of snails.....I just think crabs are to cool not to have in my reef, so I accept them for what they are.

[kien]

Originally Posted by fishytime

Im like you Kien.....I have a plethora of inverts in the tank....no shrimp anymore as my mystery wrasse finds them tasty....two tuxedo urchins, two fromia stars(Kien if your star is red, it is actually a fromia star, not a linkia....commonly mislabeled) pom pom crab(seen it once in a year), a bunch of different hermies,and an assortment of snails.....I just think crabs are to cool not to have in my reef, so I accept them for what they are.

Ya, the red starfish is a Fromia, but I do have a blue and an orange linckia as well. Oh, and also a sand sifting starfish. I will admit that I do hunt down and banish gorilla (those fuzzy ones) crabs. I used to let them be but did eventually notice them having a midnight snack on my SPS. Now those are bad inverts in my book So far have only had to pull out 3 though.

[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

[fishytime]

"Ya, the red starfish is a Fromia, but I do have a blue and an orange linckia as well. Oh, and also a sand sifting starfish. I will admit that I do hunt down and banish gorilla (those fuzzy ones) crabs. I used to let them be but did eventually notice them having a midnight snack on my SPS. Now those are bad inverts in my book So far have only had to pull out 3 though."

Orange one is a fromia too

[kien]

Originally Posted by fishytime

Orange one is a fromia too

Really?? It looks exactly like my blue Linckia except for being orange. Looks nothing like my red Fromia.. weird.. and confused now
!

[fishytime]

Originally Posted by kien

Really?? It looks exactly like my blue Linckia except for being orange. Looks nothing like my red Fromia.. weird.. and confused now
!

The red(with tiny black pores?) one is likely milliporella and the name of the other one escapes me now....It is in the invert edition of the Baensch(sp?) atlas at the shop.....No such thing as an orange linckia....as far as my research has shown.....no need to be confused......they are commonly mislabeled.

[kien]

Originally Posted by fishytime

The red(with tiny black pores?) one is likely milliporella and the name of the other one escapes me now....It is in the invert edition of the Baensch(sp?) atlas at the shop.....No such thing as an orange linckia....as far as my research has shown.....no need to be confused......they are commonly mislabeled.

Cool, thanks! Learn something new every day. I've always assumed he was an orange linckia. He still looks and behaves exactly like the blue one though

I do remember now that I once had a cowrie snail because I thought they were cool. He ended up eating things that I did not want him to eat I still think they look cool every time I see them at the LFS but don't want to risk a repeat of that incident.

[TheMikey]

When I finished cycling my tank I added a cleanup crew with a bunch of snails and three hermits. A green reef and two red hermits. The green one got much larger than the red and quickly made meals of two hermits and most of the snails in the tank. Despite the fact it was the biggest one in the tank and I had a bevy of shells available for him to move into when he grew out of his current shell.

As much as I like hermits, I'll be hard pressed to add them to any other tank that I do.

[ElGuappo]

well i have been sampling a variety of hermits lately and now know of about 3 types i wont reuse due to size or aggression. the green ones for algae they get huge and in my bowfront i have a few wierd ones that are starting to get huge..