holes in hermit crab shells

jessie

jessie

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Mar 3, 2004
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ok, im starting to find alot of hermit shells with a round hole n them. the holes are always about 3/8 of an inch from the edge of the opening of the shell. they are also about 1/4 inch holes. i cant get a count on all my hermits so i dont know if there is alot of them missing. do mantis do this or do they just smash the whole shell? i dont ever hear any clicking, and have never seen anything out of the ordinary. but i found 4 shells with the holes in them in just about the exact same spot. anybody got a clue? thanks.
 
do you have urchins? i think i recall hearing urchins drill holes into things.
 
gotta be

Has to be mantis shrimps doing that, I doubt you would miss seeing a urchin big enough to cut holes into shells, my money is on the mantis shrimp, only three ways I know of getting rid of them, get a mantis trap, or use a flashlight to search holes in your rock, they are very curious/aggressive and can usualy be seen peeking out, then either pull the rock out and pick them out of the holes or do as I do, I use a plastic syringe and inject boiling water into the hole, works for crabs also. Good Luck!
 
Are these new shells? New holes? Most of the shells I put in for my hermits already had holes in them-mostly from a parasite or predator that killed the snail that made the shell. No threat the hermit crabs--heck, I had one hermit that had a semi-permanent resident in the upper half of his shell--a bristle worm. The hermit didn't care, and the worm would sneak out and grab some food, then go back in. Since there were tons of available shells, the hermit obviously didn't mind.
 
im not sure just how long some of them have been like this, i know one of the shells always had a large scarlet in it. and once i seen that it was gone and there was a hole in the shell, i started poking around and found several with the same size hole in the same spot. now that i think of it i havnt seen my little porcelain crab for a while either. is it better to search at night? i always have a flashlight out checking the pod population in the tank and have never seen a mantis in the day before. is it common for one to come out when the lights are on? the hunt begins!!!!!!
 
Mantis do not leave tiny holes in a shell. The crushers will shatter the shell, leaving it in pieces, and the spearers will puncture the animal, but not the shell. Sorry, but this is the work of something else entirely.
 
I don't know. I do know that there are a number of animals in the ocean that will drill holes into snail shells to get at the snail, which is why I would suspect that the holes are not new.
 
Do you have any bumblebee snails? I know they attack other snails. I have seen it myself. I separated my snails before the 1 became dinner so I don't know if that is what they do. I did, however, find a snail shell with a perfect hole in it's shell sometime ago.
 
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