Hitchhiker that I'd like to keep alive

[akrkwood]

I just bought some live rock today to begin cycling a 24 gal Nano Cube. As soon as I got home and opened the container there it was sitting on top of the paper that the rocks were wrapped in; a dwarf blue legged hermit crab.
I'm using live sand, 20 pounds of dry rock and about 7.5 pounds of live rock to get things going. The first question I supposed would be how likely is this little guy to survive the first couple of weeks going through the cycle? The second question is if there's a chance that he will keep on ticking should I provide some sort of food? I threw a couple of TINY flakes of fish food in there and he went straight to them. Is this a good idea to keep the crab going until some algae starts to grow or will this have a negative effective on the tank cycling?
Thanks for the feedback

[meenamjah]

I had a bunch of hermits survive my tank cycle... they're very hardy

[akrkwood]

Originally Posted by meenamjah

I had a bunch of hermits survive my tank cycle... they're very hardy

Nice. Not that I can't easily replace it but hey one less thing to buy in a couple of weeks for my clean up crew.

[KeMo]

Sounds like you got good rock. You proubly wont have that high of an ammonia spike.
Just watch your parameters . Everything survived my cycle. I would not feed him though, my hermits will eat stuff of the rocks all the time. they dont really eat to much food i feed to the tank.

[akrkwood]

Originally Posted by KeMo

Sounds like you got good rock. You proubly wont have that high of an ammonia spike.
Just watch your parameters . Everything survived my cycle. I would not feed him though, my hermits will eat stuff of the rocks all the time. they dont really eat to much food i feed to the tank.

Noted. The LR doesn't have much coralline algae on it but it's loaded with tiny feather dusters and I think I spotted some type of coral on one piece, it's bright pink and looks like a branching type of coral although it's only a couple of centimeters long so it's hard to tell what it might be just yet.