Shells From a Fishtank

[BlookittiePC]

My uncle has a huge saltwater fish tank and when he receives more coral sometimes he gets snails too! Every now and then he'll give me a few shells, usually Mexican turbos. When I put them in the tat the crabs love picking at them and messing with them. When I got my crabs a while ago we had one of the shells in the tank and we ended up saying he "called dibs" on it because he would always be sitting on it! (He finally changed into it after three molts!) My question is if they love the salt residue and everything, would it be ok to put the shells in without washing them? My uncle de-chlorinates his tank with Prime and adds Instant Ocean. I'm just curious because they seem to like the built-up minerals and salt.

[aussieJJDude]

The good thing is that having corals, there really should be nothing problematic in the water. Corals are extremely sensitive, and require pure water - either distilled or passed through an RODI unit - to ensure the keeper knows exactly what is in the water. The only issue comes from any parasite/bacteria/infection that could be passed on to the crabs - particuarlly with any invert - like crab/shrimp - he may have, their biology is practically the same as our land hermies,

[BlookittiePC]

Thank you for the advice! I'm never quite sure what he has in his tank because the fish and things are always hiding. I think he might have a shrimp or something like that and he had an aquatic hermit crab a little while ago (I'm not sure if he still has it because I never see it) In that case I'll continue to boil the shells before putting them in. Updating on my previous post: Jarvis decided after wearing it around for a day that he didn't want to wear the shell and changed out of it this morning.