yikes, a bad hermit crab!

so the family went to a state park last weekend, and the shores were crawling with hermits, crabs, snails, urchins, abalones, and anemones. putting the illegal-ness of it, my mother insisted on bringing some livestock home for my tank. even with my objections, she snuck 6 hermits, 2 snails, and 2 abalones in a water bottle and brought it home.

I didn't even know these came along for the ride, but when we got home, she insisted on dropping it into my tank. I refused and she was going to drop it in herself. I finally caved and said at least I'll acclimate them correctly. so after a week, everything is peaceful, except that 1 hermit died during the ride home and the 2 abalones died the 2nd night. I went to the LFS and bought some small red leg hermits for clean-up.

today, I witnessed 1 of the wild hermits attacking a LFS hermit that was out of its shell and started to eat the LFS hermit. should I get rid of the wild ones right away?

the snails are peaceful thus far and is crawling all over the place. the LFS hermits are small and there are 2 small wild hermits and 3 large ones. the large ones are peaceful so far too. its the small one that's a problem. I can't even identify the type of hermit - it's brown with white bands on it's legs and claws, from california west coast.

 

Well that's nice
but bad

 

Wow, us moms really have good intentions, I'm sure she meant well.
Sorry, I don't know anything about saltwater set ups, Hopefully they'll pop in soon to help you.

Do you have another tank that you could put the wild guys into? Really, just like anything new to the tank, they should be in a q tank for at least 2 weeks.

I think I'd get rid of anything that was attacking my existing occupants.
If it were freshwater I'd recommend daily water changes, don't know if this is applicable to SW.

 

I would pull all of your wild inverts that you put in. I would not keep them at all, but if you must I would recommend a 3-4 week quaritine, in a separate tank. I would then get as good of look as possible to see what type these are so you can learn more about what they are and whether they compatible with your tank or not.

 

I also don't want them in there, but can't figure what to do with them. I can't drive back to the beach since it's a 100 mile drive. I put the little killer into my qt with my royal gramma and now he's getting picked on by the gramma.

there's always the option of just tossing them out, but I can't do that....

 

Can you get a pic?
If it could be identified, maybe some ideas could be come up with. If nothing else, we could see if it's something an LFS would be willing to buy.

 

here are some pictures of the wild hermits

this is a large one, 1 inch.


2 more of the 1-inchers


this one is only 1 cm

 

Are they land hermit crags or aquatic?

 

Are they land hermit crags or aquatic?

they were found at the shore during low tide, but they were on the rocks, in puddles of water.

i've pulled them all out of the display tank, but for the week they were in there, they seemed fine.

the snails are peacefully grazing around the live rocks and glass and I haven't seen any problems with them yet, so I left them in there. I think they might be margarita snails.

 

I'll look into it, see if I can figure out the species. It is the last one, the one with the white bands, that's causing the problems, correct?

(Hopefully, while I'm doing research, someone with more knowledge of hermit crabs will ID it and provide some info)

 

well, I did catch one of the bigger ones with my red leg hermits in it's grasp. that's when I decided to finally pull them all. these wild ones are just trouble!

btw, thanks for any help guys