Hermit Crab eating rock

[brclark82]

I have the purple “LifeRock” in my tank. It’s only about 6 weeks old and I have had a Halloween hermit in there for about 3 weeks.

In the last couple days he has started picking the purple off the rock and spitting out a cloud of chewed up rock.

Could this be becuase he doesn’t have enough to eat? I have a decent amount of algae in the rocks and sand but not a ton. I overfeed a bit so there should easily be some extra brine shrimp or pellets laying around for him to get. I only have 2 crabs and 4 snails in a 55 gallon.

Any thoughts on something I should do differently or do some crabs just do that?

 

[Tired]

You might try target-feeding him and seeing if anything changes. It's probably not great for him to be eating paint or dye or whatever they use on that stuff.

 

[Mark Goode]

Ah, so that's it. I was wondering where my purple was going. :face-with-rolling-eyes:

 

[Stomatopods17]

Are you sure its not coralline algae?

I find it more believable its eating coralline than sniffing non-toxic paint, but I suppose anything that grazes could scratch it.

 

[Tired]

6 weeks isn't long enough to get much coralline on anything.

 

[taylormaximus]

I have the purple “LifeRock” in my tank. It’s only about 6 weeks old and I have had a Halloween hermit in there for about 3 weeks.

In the last couple days he has started picking the purple off the rock and spitting out a cloud of chewed up rock.

Could this be becuase he doesn’t have enough to eat? I have a decent amount of algae in the rocks and sand but not a ton. I overfeed a bit so there should easily be some extra brine shrimp or pellets laying around for him to get. I only have 2 crabs and 4 snails in a 55 gallon.

Any thoughts on something I should do differently or do some crabs just do that?

Huh okay I'm not the only one, I just posted about the same thing wondering what's going on, my Halloween hermit just carved a big white hole in the center of my aquascape! I haven't heard of any other kind of crab that does this, but it does seem like a bit of an issue.

 

[Aquariumaddictuk]

My hermit has taken to slicing branches off my Kenya tree which is growing faster than he can prune.i have about 9 frags of it now I'll be donating to LFS in few months