Scarlet Hermits Dropping Like Flies

Laura and Jim will be hosting the May meeting this Saturday the 12th and it will be the usual of food, drinks, raffle and fun.
 
Doors will be open at 6:00 pm for social talk and the meeting will start at 7:00.  Parking gets a little tight and the city says you can't park on 4th but there is a parking lot a block away.   Meeting is usually held in the backyard so feel free to bring your favorite lawn chair, weather permitting of course.

If you need address/directions, contact a club member.

Best if you park at Mini Mall (where the spaghetti establishment use to be)
 
You will get to see his new frag tank set up in the making.
 
Hope to see you there!

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[MartyK]

Hi Everyone -

Does anyone know why scarlet hermits would die off while fish and snails are ok in the tank?  I have this 5 gallon tank with two clowns and a green chromis.  I put my Reeftopia order in this tank - all the snails are still fine, and the fish are fine, but I've lost 2 of the hermits and the third doesn't look good.  I also lost a smaller scarlet hermit from the LFS in this tank previously.

Any ideas?  I provided move up shells, and two of the crabs had changed shells.

Thanks

Marty

[tyler5g]

Check you water paramaters, make sure they are ok.  Inverts are more sensitive to things like copper than fish are.  Also, is there enough of a food source for them?
 

[angelscrx]

Depends on your definition of dropping like flies?  If they are all dying of at once then get a copper test kit.  If they are dying one a week or every couple of weeks then this is normal for them.  Scarlets don't last as long as blue legs.  A lot of folks who have them replace or replenish them every six - nine months.  If you don't have extra shells for them they can't get new homes and when they out grow their old shells become victims to fish or other crabs since they can't protect their soft bodies.  Take John's suggestion too and check you water params.

[MartyK]

As for "dropping like flies", I got 3 scarlet hermits ~ 2 weeks ago, two have gone in the last few days, and the 3rd isn't looking good (still alive, but not moving about).  They did a nice job on cleaning up some red slime algae I had in the tank, but then started eating less.  I think they had plenty of algae to eat in the tank. 

I don't think it was copper - this setup has never seen a copper treatment.  It would have had to come in with the fish from PetCo.  Also, the SPS frag I got from John about a month ago is still alive (although fading - didn't expect the lighting would be sufficient). 

As I said, it is a 5 gallon tank, probably 4 gallons of water with the rock and sand.  I've been changing out 1 gallon on water changes - maybe that was to much.  It seemed like the hermits tended to stay still for awhile after water changes.  Maybe I was shifting the pH or salinity to much with the water changes?  I'm going to go to 1/2 gallon changes for this tank from now on.

[angelscrx]

On any regular size tank a normal water change is 10%.  a gallon is 25% on your tank!  Water chemistry is harder to keep in smaller tanks.  How often are you dooing the changes?  The water should be the same temp and PH as the water coming out.  You could be having some PH shifting with that much water being changed out! Also how are you making your water up?  Are you stirring it up and changing it out or are you stirring it up over night and changing it the next day which is best?  POst your parameters and maybe we can see something there.  Thanks

[MartyK]

OK - Now I'll have to admit to being to impatient.  After 7+ stationary days, and another hermit picking at his discarded parts, one of my "dead" hermits has returned from his molt.  I think we'll call him Zombie.  Unfortunately, I expect that I probably killed the 2nd and he would have been ok if I'd left him alone.

I was surprised at how long the molting process took.  I gave up on these guys after about 4 days.


 

[angelscrx]

Not really sure if hermits molt but that would explain your situation!  Congrats!!!!

[dakota's dad]

i do dose iodine some but my hermits molt all the time and its usually over night