do hermits decimate pods?

[salty joe]

I have very few pods and a bunch of hermit crabs that constantly pick at the rocks.
Should I lose the hermits to get more pods?

 

[EmdeReef]

I have very few pods and a bunch of hermit crabs that constantly pick at the rocks.
Should I lose the hermits to get more pods?

How do you count pods? Visual methods may not always be the best. How many hermits and how big is the tank? Crabs will eat just about anything but not sure they’d be able to eradicate pods...

 

[salty joe]

I added 100 hermits from Reef Utopia several months ago to my 700 gallon tank.
I sometimes look around with a flashlight at night and I'm not seeing any bugs running around. I recently started culturing and adding phyto.

 

[DarkSky]

Judging by my tank, no.

I have an innumerable number of pods and 30+ hermits in my 220g. Did you seed your tank with pods? Is there enough food for them to eat and reproduce?

 

[ChrisRD]

Assuming you have fish in the tank...they're having a much larger impact on the pod population than the crabs. Although I think most crabs will eat whatever they can get I doubt hermit crabs could catch enough living pods to have much of an impact on the overall population.

As mentioned above...seeding with pods and having a refugium or sump area where they can reproduce without being eaten by the fish would probably be the best way to cultivate large numbers.

 

[shred5]

Assuming you have fish in the tank...they're having a much larger impact on the pod population than the crabs. Although I think most crabs will eat whatever they can get I doubt hermit crabs could catch enough living pods to have much of an impact on the overall population.

As mentioned above...seeding with pods and having a refugium or sump area where they can reproduce without being eaten by the fish would probably be the best way to cultivate large numbers.

Agreed.

Not to mention most copepods are very hard to see with the eye.

 

[salty joe]

Thanks all!