We let the anoles and geckos go in the back yard from M's large (20 gallon) aquarium and it stood unused on the back porch for a while. I cleaned it up, added some sand and salt water, and, for fun, started an aquarium last weekend. In a few days the water turned a cloudy brownish green from algae. We added three hermit crabs a few days ago and the algae has started to clear up (although I suspect this is more due to using up nutrients in the water rather than the crabs). This species, Calcinus seurati, goes by a few common names, Seurat's hermit crab, whitebanded hermit crab, or zebra hermit crab. They are in the left handed (larger left claw that they use to block their shell), Diogenidae, family of hermit crabs and occur in the Indo-Pacific ocean from East Africa to Polynesia. They are easy to catch in rock pools just above the waves, especially on the windward side of O'ahu; and they eat bits of filamentous algae. They have blue eyes on the end of their eye stalks, red antennae, and black and white striped legs. This one is in a periwinkle shell and has climbed on top of the slipper lobster carapace that I collected and blogged about earlier.
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