Hermits eating coralline algae

grassy_noel · Jul 17, 2018

I'm almost sure that my tiny (maybe red legged) hermit crabs are eating the coralline algae off my rocks. I had some nice purple patches developing on my dry rock and now they're completely white. I noticed last night that three crabs were all clustered around one little dot of purple.

Also, they're useless for eating green hair algae. If I can find someone to take them off my hands, I think they're going to be evicted from my tank.

Has anyone else had their hermits eat or scrape off coralline algae?

Brew12 · Jul 17, 2018

grassy_noel said:
I'm almost sure that my tiny (maybe red legged) hermit crabs are eating the coralline algae off my rocks. I had some nice purple patches developing on my dry rock and now they're completely white. I noticed last night that three crabs were all clustered around one little dot of purple.

Also, they're useless for eating green hair algae. If I can find someone to take them off my hands, I think they're going to be evicted from my tank.

Has anyone else had their hermits eat or scrape off coralline algae?

I've never seen my hermits eat coralline. When my Urchin eats coralline it completely disappears, it doesn't turn white. I would think it is possible that the coralline in your system may be dying from other causes and the hermits are eating stuff growing on the dead edges. Of course, that's just a guess.

grassy_noel · Jul 17, 2018

Hmm...that would be a shame. If that's the case, I wonder what could be causing the coralline to die.

cristata.reef · Jul 17, 2018

Never had a problem with them eating it, but maybe they are since I have very little coralline growth in what should be perfect conditions (my candy cane seems to be growing faster than my GSP lol). But I can agree that they don't touch the GHA in the least bit

willow659 · Jun 6, 2019

My small micro hermits totally eat the coraline algae off the coraline algae plates I have. Every fricking day. Literally watch them multiple times scrape it off and put it in their mouths. I’m so mad. Never ever ever have I ever seen hermits do this.