Somethin's eatin' ma' snails!

Thought I would put and interesting title on this. I wasn't sure which forum to put this thread..if a mod knows where this would go, please redirect it to there. Thanks.

About a week ago I noticed a decline in my number of CUC members. I didn't have many to begin with, but there's only one fish in my 29g. Anyways, when I saw that I had lost some, I went to my LFS & got 9 more hermits & 1 nassarius snail. Well I look in my tank today, about a week later, & see a few empty snail shells on the CC sandbed. Ugh. Something appears to be eating my CUC. The only other things in my tank are 2 cleaner shrimp and 1 CB angel. It's in my sig.

I do have 2 hitchhikers. 1 spaghetti worm & 1 bristle worm. What could have eaten the sails/hermits?

 

Are you sure the hermits are getting eaten? My first thought is your hermits are killing the snails for food.

 

if hermits are hungry they will eat snails. ive seen it first hand. i saw a epic battle between 3 hermits and 2 snails and the hermits won lol

 

lol. That's a crazy battle. Well, I am not certain but I have looked in a cave that goes completely through a rock and at the bottom, on the sand bed was an empty snail shell & hermit shell, side by side. The Hermits are very small, less than half the size of my nassarius. I only have 2 nassarius left. I had 5 at one time. My largest blue leg hermit disappeared, which is when I finally went to the LFS last. That one hermit was about an inch across?

 

Are you getting your CUC from the same place?

 

Yeah, same fish store since I started the tank.

 

I'm going to say gigantic crazy flatworm, since I have one currently mopping up my CUC.

 

I would put money on the hermits eating the snails.

Hermit crabs are not to be trusted for the most part. I only will use redlegged mexican or scarlet hermits in my reefs because both of these kinds are not so apt to snarf snails like blue legged or all the other kinds are.

 

Flatworm! No, I don't want that! lol. I didn't know that about blue legged hermits apposed to red.

 

I say hungry hermits eating the snails, and eating each other. How much stuff is there in the tank for them to chow on? Hermits will also murder another to steel the other guys shell. Do you have some extra shells in the tank for them?