dismembered hermit

[Hpimichael02]

hey guys,

i was watching my inverts since my clown is still in QT, and noticed that my green emerald crab was being very aggressive towards my hermits, to the point he would clamp his claws at them and pick and move them around briefly. i came back a few hours later and noticed an empty shell at the base of the rock where my crab hangs out and tiny legs around the area. im assuming the crab kill the hermit.

do these crabs do this often? if so is there anyway to stop him, he is fed by hand so im sure he is not hungry.

[smaug]

Crabs are some bloodthirsty buggers,hermits as well as the other types. My ems have a war goin on with my bumblebee snails lately and the bbs are losing.

[Fishkeeper]

The green emerald might do that with the fish too, with a mean crab like that I'd take it back to the store. Try a porcelain crab instead, they're peaceful filter feeders.

[labnjab]

Hermits like to kill each other for the heck of it. Most of the time they do it to take the others shell, but I've seen them do it just for the fun of it, and just leave the shell there. I usually have to buy more hermits twice a year because of this

[sheamurai]

Emeralds don't seem to like each other much. I've bought two twice, and each time I ended up with just one.

My hermits, however, since I stopped giving them bigger shells, are not killing each other off anymore. I still have almost all my hermits from when I first started the tank.