few questions

[ThatDarnDragon]

hi again

question #1. How often does a hermit crab shed? I have one red legged crab and it shedded 3 times in one month. I got several shells in there if it outgrows the old one.

question #2. My tank has been running for 3-4 weeks without fish, just the inverts (listed in my siggy). How do I know when the ich is completely gone before I add a goby? Im seeing tiny white spots crawling on the glass.

question #3. I hear Decorative Crabs would eat other plyops and other inverts, is that true? Should I get one?

 

[Navarre]

Hermit can shed quite often. if they are doing this then i wold do some water tets as i feel something is irritating them to make them shed skins.


You will never eradicate Ich from a tank no matter how long you keep it fish free. The parasire will come in with any new fish you purchase anyway so its basically defeating the object. I have seen tanks that have never had a fish in them since settingup and afer a number ofyears of coral growths etc fish have been introduced only to catch Ich almost immediately.

The only way to combat ich is to keep the fish in a stress free environment and a healthy varied diet.

Decorator crabs

Feeding. The decorating crab generally feeds in a manner conserved throughout the Decopoda order of the class Malacostraca. The mechanics are amazing. The five most anterior segments of the crabs body are fused into what we recognize as a head, although five pairs of appendages still mark the position of these segments. These head appendages have become highly modified to aid in feeding. Decorator crabs posses six pairs of mouth parts. The most posterior three, the maxillipeds, are not head appendages but in fact are the first three appendages of the thorax. They are used to cover and protect the inner most mouth parts as well as to manipulate large pieces of food. Once food has been obtained via the large pincers, or chelipeds, it is passed to the posterior-most maxilliped, which forces the food item into the other mouth parts. The inner- most mouth part, the mandible, a structure analogous to a jaw, is the main agent of food maceration. The other mouth parts, the maxillae, are used to rip food while it's held by the mandible. Finally, once the food has been reduced to an appropriate size, it is passed into the mouth. The mouth leads to the esophagus, which in turn opens to a specialized stomach. The stomach is lined with contiguous exoskeleton shaped like teeth that line an area of the stomach known as the gastric mill. This muscular stomach can grind food into a messy pulp using the teeth and strong muscle contractions. It is also interesting to note that this exoskeleton covering the fore gut and a similar piece aft is molted with the rest of the exoskeleton during the crab's cyclic periods of growth.

The decorator crab is not a mollusc predator or probably much of a carnivore. The long spindle pincers don't have the mechanical advantage need to crush bivalve shells or other crabs exoskeleton's. In fact, the decorator crab, a type of spider crab, is more of an omnivore, using the longer pincers to pluck small animals from crevices and scavenging on the sea floor. Tropical species of decorator crab have a diet consisting mostly of algae.

 

[Ed4567]

While, as has been said, you can never eradicate ich from your tank completly, by leaving your tank empty for this amount of time you will have significantly reduced the number of parasites in your tank. Sorry no idea how much much longer you should leave your tank.

Also once you get a new fish you might want to keep a close watch on ammonia/ nitrite levels just to check the your biological filter bed is up to speed.
Ed

 

[ThatDarnDragon]

Well, Im not planning on getting anymore fish for a long while. I just want to keep it a reef tank.

Anyone have info on flame scallops? Im thinking of getting one of those.

and the water tested fine, everything normal. I did a water change after testing however, i change water at least once a week since it is a 10 gal

 

[Great Lakes]

Decorator crabs are extremely cool, but I had for for a long time, and he would frustrate me by being a large clumsy fellow and knocking newly placed frags all over the place. He also loved to take snippets of my clove polyps and xenia and cover himself with them.

The worst crab I ever owned was an arrow crab. They will eat anything they can get ahold of, and love shrimp in particular.

My favorite is my Sally Lightfoot. She looks darn near like a tarantula, and does not seem to disturb anything.

Either the Decorator or the Sally are neat choices, but are mainly nocturnal. So you won't see them much if you have plenty of rockwork.

GL

 

[Navarre]

I recently had a flame scallop but it died due to a parasetic crab that lived inside it. (Pea Crab) Many scallops have these crabs inside and most are never discovered but occasionally these crabs take a little too much food from the scallop and it severly slows their growth or even starves them.

 

[ThatDarnDragon]

I will look into those crabs, greatlakes

Nav, you make it seem the flame scallop is hard to care for, is it? if i get a flame scallop, is there a way I can inspect it to make sure nothings on or in it?

 

[Navarre]

No they are quite easy to care for to be honest. They dont require light so thats a bonus and they feed purely by filtering the water. They are stunning to watch but their main problem is they just wont stay where you want them to stay. They are extremly mobile and will shott off around the tank at high speed when it suits them. And of course, the place they find most suitable to themin the tank is near always in a location where it cant be reached or seen

Some people glue them to the rocks to stop this but i prefer not to do this.

There simplyis no way of knowing if they are a host for a Pea crab until they die and the crab moves out. As I mentioned, the crab doesnt usually harm the Scallop and usually just feeds off the food that it catches. This usually means the scallops develops slowly (not a bad thing in a captive tank) or if the crab takes too much it can die of starvation but its rare. The crab cannot live without the scalop so killing it doesnt help the crabs survival really.

Mine died and i discovered teh crab inside but i cant really blame the crab for this as the scalop might have been dying already. It certainly wouldnt stop me getting another scallop in the future.

IMO they are great things to watch and not overly demanding. Lots of colour too!

 

[ThatDarnDragon]

How big does the flame scallop get? it will be alright for a 10 gal?

Any other suggestions on inverts for 10 gal low-medium light? I want to fill as much as I can, since I think the reef tanks with many inverts looks awesome

I added a brighter bulb to do high light, but it melted the top cover so high light is out of the question for now (till I invest in a bigger & better tank!). The max wattage I can get is 45 without melting the top, 60 melted.

Unless there's a certain bulb that would be best that I dont know about?

 

[Navarre]

the flame scallop will do fine in a small tank they wont outgrow the tank

Why dont you remove the cover? if its not housing fish then there is nothing to jump out

 

[ThatDarnDragon]

the cover has the bulbs. Unless I dont need a light bulb at all? my room light is usually on and gets decent light.