Is This A Good Thing Or Bad Thing

[floraandfauna]

in my 40 gal reef tank, i've got two clowns, one engineered goby, one dragonette scooter and about eight or nine hermit crabs - one of them is large.  i need to know if i made a mistake in adding the hermit crabs when i've got one little scooter in there, which can not be on a skimpy diet.  i'm worried i created more competition than he can handle.  does anyone know if it's a good thing or a bad thing?  thanks for your help.

 

[techen]

40 gal is a good size for the amount of hermits. Is scooter eating or?

 

[floraandfauna]

40 gal is a good size for the amount of hermits. Is scooter eating or?

i see the scooter eating, though has gotten skinny due to my previous feeding schedule which i made for my greedy clown fish - every other day.  i then took everyone off this schedule and resumed feeding once everyday.  with the new schedule do you think he'll improve?  or should i remove some of the hermits?

 

[Donya]

nine hermit crabs - one of them is large

 
Need a picture to get this IDed. Some large hermits are safe but clumsy, others can be quite destructive and need a tank built around their behaviors to avoid disasters.
 
Hermits will not be direct competition for a scooter. They will clean up scraps that might be eaten by pods otherwise, but those scraps might also just make the water quality worse if uneaten by the hermits. Hermits are really not the culprit if the tank is struggling to produce pods in sufficient quantities. How old is the tank? A more likely scenario is that the dragonet is simply depleting the pod populations faster than they can recover because either the tank is new or there is not enough pod-producing area in the tank (not enough rock, etc.). 

 

[floraandfauna]

nine hermit crabs - one of them is large

 
Need a picture to get this IDed. Some large hermits are safe but clumsy, others can be quite destructive and need a tank built around their behaviors to avoid disasters.
 
Hermits will not be direct competition for a scooter. They will clean up scraps that might be eaten by pods otherwise, but those scraps might also just make the water quality worse if uneaten by the hermits. Hermits are really not the culprit if the tank is struggling to produce pods in sufficient quantities. How old is the tank? A more likely scenario is that the dragonet is simply depleting the pod populations faster than they can recover because either the tank is new or there is not enough pod-producing area in the tank (not enough rock, etc.). 

This tank was a gift. sposed to be about five years old.  spose i should either up-grade to 50/55 gal. or possibly just find a wider, shorter 40 gal.  that way i could manage more live rock...?  another thing- i've been looking into buying a bottle of copepods or amphipods from the LFS.  But reading about them, im finding that i've got to raise them in a separate container.  and then put a percentage in the tank.  is that the only way?