Hermit crab mystery and brown stuff.....

[kosey929]

Hi!

I have two concerns today....

1) I have some brown stuff growing on all of my live rock. Is it algae?

2) I bought 2 red hermit crabs and put them in my tank 3 days ago. This morning when I got up I found a dead red hermit crab (sans shell) next to a living hermit crab (complete with shell). Naturally I thought one had died so I searched out the other shell....but there is still a live crab inside!!! How on earth did I end up with 3 crabs? The dead one is a whole crab, not just part of a crab....the two shells both contain live, kicking, breathing hermits... ???? Where did the third one come from?? Could there have been two in one shell? Or could one have been hiding in the live rock? Procreation is out of the question, as they are all full size crabs.

Hmmmmmm.......

Karen om

 

[brandon]

ok

concern 1, probably diatoms, happens to most people when their tanks are young

conern 2, take a deep breath, your hermit crab just molted (basically threw away its old shell for a new one) its natural too

 

[kosey929]

1 - what do I do about the diatoms?

2 - aahhhhh makes sense.

Thank you!

 

[brandon]

no problem
i remember the first time my hermit molted.... scared me too :mrgreen:

about the diatoms: caused by use of tap water sometimes, also it is natural due to cycle

you can get rid of it with a cleaning crew and water changes
it can also disappear by itself when it uses up all its nutrients (silica)
also, when doing water changes, use RO/DI instead

good luck :mrgreen:

 

[kosey929]

I ordered some nassaurius snails - will they help with the diatoms?

Also, I bought RO water from Wal-Mart and haven't used any tap water. Could the silica be in my LS? :???:

 

[brandon]

im not sure if the nassaurius snails will help with the diatoms, it should go away by itself if you want to handle it that way...

i am sure that astrea snails and nerite snails eat diatoms

good luck

 

[Jennie]

Its pretty much normal for a new tank to go through a diatom bloom. You can syphon off what you can get to and it should help it clear up.

 

[EDGRAY]

Well the nassarius wont help with the diatom ...what they do is to stir the LS .... and well the nerite and cerith might help with the diatom but well it will go away by it self when tank matures but if bugs you do what jennie recommended and also you can starve them to death just run some phosphate remover and keep your water changes so your nitrates are at 0 and dont run your light more than 8 hours for now and u will be ok ...(if no corals yet dont run your lights that much)

HTH :mrgreen:

 

[idog]

My Nassarious snails eat whatever is in the sand, Ceriths, turbos and Astrea what is on the glass and the rocks. A good combo. Diatoms are nothing.... wait till you get the hair algae!