Paranoid? I hope so. Why won't these hermits, well, come out of their shell?

None... :-/

I'm not sure what to think anymore. My parameters are normal, and from what I've read, they'd have to be horribly off to affect hardy hermits...

I snapped a shot of Remus (haha - My GF insisted I name everything in the tank. These two hermits were going to be Remus and Romulous - the founders of my "rome".. but at this point their names are highly unsuitable.)

He looks...... Red. Droopy maybe? I don't know. Tell me what you guys think.

EDIT: ok.. he looks dead. But he's not. His little twichy mouth parts (feel free to let me know what those are called) are buzzing away like crazy. When I disturb him in anyway, he shrinks back into his shell really fast, so he's not lethargic or "weakly".

 

Hermits still not moving... and not looking great.

So.. I'm starting to worry again. These guys just are still not doing anything!

One of them looks great. He's super fast when I try to elicit any response from him, but the other - not so much. He looks like he may have deteriorated.

(I'm sure I'm going to look back at this whole shenanighans and laugh, but I don't want anything to die)

I've been thinking about my water. As I said, all normal in terms of what I can test.

I don't have any kits to test Ca or Alk. levels yet. The guy at the LFS said Ammonia, Nitrates, Nitrites should really be all I need to worry about at this early stage.

But.. about a week before adding the crabs, I was dosing the water with a buffer to fix my low pH. It said it'd continue to raise the alkalinity of the water once the pH was 8.3. I remember reading too high of an alk. can cause problems with Ca?

Are any of those values relevant, or am I just a babbling fool?

Brew

 

Take your time

Maybe they are enjoying their new kingdom...lol

 

haha. I guess so.

 

2 threads regarding this subject have been merged.

 

just wait it out... I seem to remember when I first added red legged hermits they sat there for a while and I thought something was wrong... they're still alive 1 year later.

 

One of em died.

So I just got home from school, and one of them is dead. He has his whole body for the most part out of the shell, and is, without a doubt, not going back in it.

The other one is still very much alive, and has moved. (perhaps he got tired of the monologue with the dead hermit and has turned around, and walked directly into the live rock.)

The fact that one is dead, while the other is still very fast to move and seems to be fine, though he is still lethargic makes me feel like I just got a bad crab? If the water were the issue wouldn't they both be dead?

Do I leave the dead guy in there for the other guy to eat (yes, that sounds horrible), or do I take him out?

 

could just be your LFS has a lower salt level then what you have in your tank. I know my LFS has their tanks at around 1.017-1.020, you could ask ur LFS and see, this will help when it come time to add fish, you can slowly drip them to get them slowly use to the salt level in your tank. For hermits i dk if its that big of deal but i like to drip all livestock i get. or you just just add a tsp of you tank water in the bag every 5-10 min if you dont have a way to drip them.you could try lifting them out of the water for a few seconds, mine normally will come out if i do that, or peak out for a second.

 

Yeah. I'll have to check. As I said above though, one of them is dead. The only thing I can think to do at this point is get some more extensive test kits on the way home tonight and see if there is anything abnormal that I haven't tested for.

So lame. I really didn't want anything to die. :-/

 

Is there any chance you may have copper in your water?? Are you using filtered RO water or tap water? Copper kills inverts in short order.