Hermits all over my frags!

[tmscott89]

So I have one green Goniopora and three soft coral frags all bought in the last week. As of right now all seem to be doing ok however my hermits have done nothing but crawl all over them and I can’t tell if they are eating things off the coral or actually eating the coral. Anyone have experience with this?

 

[Mariette]

I’ve got limited experience w GSP and some Acans. Hermits will occasionally crawl over em. gsp closes up in response. Opens up soon after hermit leaves. Large Acan doesn’t react. Small acans seem to shrink to try and escape. Bounce back soon after the incident. I have some slime growing on the frags so I assume hermits are cleaning that up. Keep an eye on the corals and go from there. Best of luck

 

[GCL]

I’ve been having the same issue for a while now. I’ve been spot feeding my Goniopora since I got it and read they benefit from regular feeding. It did very well for a while but after a while the hermits figured it out and shortly after feeding would head over and walk all over it, picking the food off and getting an easy meal. As a result the Goni doesn’t open quite as much and doesn’t seem to be growing. It retracts as soon as a crab touches the disc it’s mounted on. I’ve flicked the crabs away after feeding but as soon as I give up they go for it. My strategy at this point is to broadcast feed rather than spot feed and it seems to help. I was considering modifying a bottle to put over the Goni during feeding but I think as soon as I took it off the crabs would still go for it. The slimy food that sloughs off them after feeding seems to be like candy for hermit crabs. I also have another Goni right next to it that the crabs don’t bother, no idea why.

 

[tmscott89]

Exact same issue. Feeding reef roids mixed with water through syringe and Coral only gets to feed on it for matter of minutes before crabs are all over it depleting every drop lol may have to start broadcast feeding

 

[Jay Z]

This is going to sound dumb. I had the same issue with my hermits. I added a kessil 80 over the center of my rock work just to grow algae. Helped keep them centered for 6-8 hours a day until they eat it and then go exploring. And the ones that don’t like algae get tricked with broadcast feedings. Stick mysis cube to power head, watch them get confused. Spot feed my corals.

Frozen cube of mysis on a power head goes a long way for keeping everyone’s attention. Works on pesky shrimp too.

 

[jaxredsoxfan]

Not sure if you have fish, but I usually feed the fish first with pumps on- frozen mysis and sinking pellets. about 10 min later I shut off pumps and feed coral reef riods slurry. Usually hermits still eating pellets so haven't had an issue with them taking food from corals.

 

[Indytraveler83]

I’ve had a few particularly large hermits do damage to corals, they seem to be pretty opportunistic feeders, but most of the smaller ones leave it alone.

I second the idea of target feeding them first, before corals. I like to give mine a few small chunks of cocktail shrimp to chase after before feeding corals directly.