Blue Leg Hermits Keep Dying

[dburns865]

I have been trying to add blue legged hermits to my brackish tank but they keep dying after a few weeks. It's a well established tank, with happy mollies, gobies, and amano shrimp. I keep the salinity around 1.010 - 1.012 and check after every water change. Yet they keep fading away. Ill notice one alive, but not walking around, then they're dead a few days later. I have two little ones that have survived through all of it, the rest die about a month or so after being introduced. 
 
What am I doing wrong?
 
I also wanted to add I do try to acclimate them. I generally buy them after work at 5 and put in spoonfuls of tank water every 20 minutes into their bag until I go to bed around 10 or 11. 

 

[techen]

Aren't blue legs full marine crabs? Am fairly sure they live in a salnity of 1.024 which might be why there dying when you put them in the tank. Hermits are insanely hardy and very hard to kill.

 

[Lunar Jetman]

I think Techen's right. I'm no Marine expert but everywhere I look to tell me about this type of Hermit crab tells me it should go in a Marine tank rather than a brackish one.

 

[Chad]

He is right, they are marine crabs. They can be slowly acclimated to lower salinity such as in a brackish tank but they won't do well and the acclimation would need to be a slow drip over the course of about an hour and a half but even then they won't last long. I would say 1.018 is as low as I would go with them.
 
For a brackish tank you would want to go with something like a fiddler crab which is a brackish crab.

 

[dburns865]

I am pretty sure they can survive, in fact I got the idea from this thread:
 
http/www.fishforums.net/index.php?/topic/149491-blue-legged-hermit-crabs/

 

[Chad]

That tank is 1.016 according to the post. That's more like a marine fish only salinity so at that level I am sure they would survive. A traditional brackish is more along the lines of 1.005 up to 1.008, maybe 1.010.