Mine will take small shrimp or algae wafers right out of my fingers. The males will anchor food with their large claw and pick with the small, and the females tend to grab it with both claws and their front legs. Mainly they just scavenge what they can find hidden among the sand on the bottom. (They LOVE fish poop.
) They're very much like hermit crabs in that they like to grab and run with it so they can eat in peace. I also feed lavar (seaweed), insects, and veggies. They are definitely scavengers and not hunters, though I'm sure if they were lucky enough to catch a fish they would!
I even forgot to mention the guppies.
I brought home 3 males two weeks ago. The blue one died after 6 days and I don't know why, but they had just come in so it could have been from shipping. The other two are doing great and I'm actually in love with them. (And before this I hated guppies.) One looks like a Monet painting, and the other is a pale cream with red-orange fins. They're a lot more like bettas than I thought possible - they're already coming over and swimming at the front of the tank whenever I stop to peek at them. The cats are going bonkers over them though.
The stand is getting ripped to shreds as they're doing chin-ups in order to get a better look. :roll: I think we're going to get a few more tomorrow because I am in love! It just depends on what we can find.
I did drop the salinity to 1.008 since we got the guppies, and they seem to be holding strong so I'm crossing my fingers that it works. I've heard of people keeping them in full marine so I think they'll be alright. (I am fighting off the urge to bring home a baby bumblebee goby because they are so cute, but they could eat the fids when grown.) I'm still planning on the blue-legged hermits, but it's going to be a while until we can afford a larger filter and enough coral and live rock to make it work. (Other things came up, so it's on the back burner for now.)
As for having a bigger left or right - it's a 50/50 split when they're born, from what I've read. What's really amazing is if they loose their large claw then on the next molt the
other claw enlarges and the missing claw grows in as the small claw. (I actually had this happen in my tank and it was so neat!) In captivity there have been males born with
two large claws, which is a really neat mutation.
I'm down to three males (the huge male, the teeny baby, and a small male), and four females (the large one from last summer that is as large as the male, two mediums, and a small). Don't have a clue if I lost count or they died/were killed. (Since we bring them home when we do our grocery runs it's usually late at night after a long day and I sometimes forget to write it down.) We will not be getting any more males unless the big male dies, but we are going to try for some more females as I think we need a larger harem.
I'm not sure how long he had been in the plant like that as he stunk to high heaven when I got him out of the tank. I don't know if it was a molting problem - he kind of crumbled which leads me to think it was a failed molt, but he also had a huge gash on his back so he may have been a victim of fighting. 
