Do hermit crabs eat zoas?

Koshal14 · Nov 23, 2019

I just caught my Hermit crabs on top of my New Zoa frag this evening. Think they may have been eating it. The lights have just gone up and polyps has just closed. We all open earlier when the blues were on. Do they eat Zoas? I moved them but then one went straight back on it. Do I need to put them on the naughty step? (Step being sump)

FishyDP · Jan 5, 2020

Koshal14 said:
I just caught my Hermit crabs on top of my New Zoa frag this evening. Think they may have been eating it. The lights have just gone up and polyps has just closed. We all open earlier when the blues were on. Do they eat Zoas? I moved them but then one went straight back on it. Do I need to put them on the naughty step? (Step being sump)

My blue legged hermits have been doing the same thing to a colony of palys lately. I am considering sumping them as well.

Reefrats · Jun 8, 2020

I have seen my hermits on my zoas but I thought they were just eating some algae on the plug. Yesterday my clove polyps didn’t open (except for 1). I had about 9 on a plug. I’m wondering if a hermit crab ate them. The tank has been up for 4 months and the two plugs have been in for 2 weeks. They were fine until yesterday. All parameters are perfect so it’s the only thing I can figure. Zoas look fine - for now.

Alisas88 · Sep 23, 2020

Soehl said:
I have had the same problem... I am wondering it the zebra hermits are the culprits.

Just caught my blue leg hermit digging around in my zoas..had 2 polyps melt off the base plug, glued one to a rock and seems to be slowly coming around..the other didn’t make it. The gang of 11 that originals seem okay.. still learning about them. Heres a pic of the gang and also the guilty hermit with the ticked off single polyp. Thanks for the thread look forward to comments.

Fyodor.Hoogeveen · Apr 3, 2021

coralgazer said:
I have a new reef tank cookin, up 9 months and well cycled. Parameters are perfect. I have mushroom corals, ricordeas, a large hammer coral, 2 feather dusters, all absolutely flourishing.

I want to grow a bunch of zoas. I ordered a frag with 10 polyps. I could see 10 little polyps. By day 7 it was down to about 7. Within 5 days everything was gone! disappeared! Nothing left but bare rock. Since my water parameters are so awesome, what could've happened?

I do have several hermit crabs, which were seen in the vicinity of the new frag rock. Could they have eaten these off the rock? The company has offered to replace them, but I need to know how to protect them so they can spread a little bit, and hopefully not disappear. Any suggestions welcome

i do know there are hermits that will rip them off, not necessarily eat them, mine for example, i put my zoas in the refugium where only my hermit lives, big old one, to get rid of some forming bubble algae, the hermit ate the bubble algae, but in the process it also destroyed the frag, i found the pieces though and tried to keep them alive, it went alright.