Hermit Crab Spawning

A couple of days ago, I saw what appeared to be hundreds of tiny fish in my main tank, and thought my clowns egg's had hatched (but they were all securly attached to their rock still). Last night I noticed them again and investigated. I found this Hermit crab laying on its back with wave after wave of tiny fry spewing out of its shell!!

Category:

Pets & Animals

Tags:

• hermit
• crab
• spawning
• salt
• water
• marine
• aquarium

[Rix750]

Actually what you are seeing in the video is a type of copepod. They are very common is salt water aquariums.  They normally come out at night.

[CunningStunt123]

@Rix750 G'day. While I agree they look like copepods in this video, I can assure you they weren't :)

Its difficult to see in the low res video, but the newly hatched fry were coming out of the hermit's shell. It was sort of "pumping"(for lack of a better word) them out in waves.

Thanks for stoping by.

[CunningStunt123]

@Rix750

youtube dot com/watch?v=H7zZJnFdprE&NR=1

This user has posted a great vid of the fry!

[meganboiling]

mine are doing this as i speak!!!!! but the 2 in question are stuck togeather. i only have 2 so i take it the male and female are stuck togeather, but hundreds of baby 'fish' are flying everywhere.

[CunningStunt123]

Oops, I just realised my wife was signed in on her account! Anyway, as I said, Awesome news!

[CunningStunt123]

Not that I have seen, as I said most of them get sucked up by the filter, and the rest probably get eaten.

[gloup81]

amphipods , ur tank is well oxyganated m8 , the size of amphipods is an indicator or oxygen availability

if ur crab spawns she'll find a strong curent spot , lay up and back and u will see her almost grabing her eggs and spreds it to the curent in a 90c angle , u want be guessing of anything else u see the eggs pop out of her

[HeeroWithAGun]

You must have one hell of a environment there, buddy, for them to breed like that! Congratulations. Too bad keeping hermit crab babies alive is impossible (so far!)

[henrylover360]

nice but how can u tell if a crab is a girl or a boy

[RachelB1981]

That's awesome. I think it's a great compliment when anything in your tank is comfortable enough to reproduce. They all get eaten or sucked up in the filter, poor little guys. Such is life I guess.

Take care.