Cool looks like I'll pick up the Pom Pom at my store

It seems these guys eat their exoskeletons after shedding them.

Cosette molted a couple of days after I got her. For 2 days I could see the shell listing upside down in a back corner; a day later it was gone. I’m certain it didn’t disintegrate all at once like that or float away.

Nestlée molted and left the shell in a tunnel of my rock. On day 3 it had disappeared, but I later saw it outside the tunnel, about 3” from the earlier spot. Something dragged it there. Next morning it’s in the same spot but all the legs are gone, just part of the head remains.

There isn’t anything else in the tank that could have done this: no fish, no shrimp, dwarf cerith snails, some small (less than 2”) bristle worms, no other crabs but these 2 pompoms.

Imagine dragging your old skeleton around and then eating it, lol!

Good observations It's quite common for inverts to eat to their exoskeleton to reclaim the minerals and nutrients in it

I love my pom-pom. When I got him he had only one anemone and now he has two! These guys are so fun to watch.
Here are some pics of mine eating some mysis shrimp. I think his anemone is eating one too.

Well, I got my first pom-pom crab quite a few months ago. That one did not have any anemone when I bought it. I also haven't seen it in about 2 months, even though I'm fairly certain that it's still alive in my little 5 gallon tank. Yesterday, I went to the LFS and saw that they had 2 pom pom crabs, and both had 2 anemones!!! I've been looking for a while for one that had the anemones in the hope that they would share.

So, I bought both of the crabs and brought them home. A few hours after introduction, I see all 3 crabs, even the one that I haven't seen in 2 months had come out to check out the new comers I guess. Then today, I noticed the old crab I had was carrying 1 anemone in one claw. Then I found the other one that had given this crab an anemone. Then, observing them some more, I notice that these two always seem to be hanging out near each other. Could it be that they are pairing up?? At the least, they seem to be good friends.

Nice, lucky you

I bought one without anenomes and then added a second that had both about a month later. As soon as the new guy hit the sandbed the anenome-less crab came flying out of the rocks and mugged him for one of his anenomes. The good news is that they've both got 2 pom poms now, the bad news is that one stays on the right side of the tank and the other stays on the left - I was hoping I'd luck out and end up with a pair, pretty sure after getting a better look at their abdomens that I got 2 males though. I'd kind of like to trade one of them for a female, I think they'd be out a lot more because right now they're treating my tank like the Korean Penninsula

Koensayr, do you know the sex of your 3 crabs? Exciting to hear another story about sharing.

Paratiddes, can you add more detail about the mugging? Was the old one bigger than the new one? Did he just grab it out of the newbie's claw, punch him or what?

Also, how big is your tank? I guess the dimensions of the bottom are more relevant than gallons.

I didn't see the hand-off when my pompomless crab aquired nems from the newbie, really wish I had.

I've got a standard 10g so the footprint is about 20in x 10in, the original pom pom (Kung Pao Crab) is quite a bit bigger and for the most part already favored the right side of the tank. Literally within seconds of the new crab (Angus) hitting the sand KPC had scurried out of the rocks and sized Angus up. There was definitely no gentle handing off or sharing between the two, it was more like two cats fighting in a cartoon where you just see a ball of dust rolling around. It was over pretty quickly, probably 5 seconds tops and KPC was headed back into the rockwork on the right side of the tank - I didn't notice that he had an anenome at first but did notice that Angus was missing one. He saw the crab that manhandled him go right so he went the other way, I haven't seen them near each other since. I'd say within two weeks they both were carrying two anenomes

I'm always amazed at how quickly things in the tank know that one of their own has been added. I had a lone hermit crab (don't know the species but he's mostly beige) for probably 6 months and tried to add two blue legs and a scarlet. The beige hermit (Sheen) came flying out of the rocks and immediately attacked the scarlet who sadly died later that day, it was similar size and the blues were much smaller so maybe that's why he spared them

I can tell the sexes of the bigger crabs (think food when I buy them at the sea food market) pretty easily. However, I think I was wrong when I looked at these crabs in the store. I thought all 3 were females, but judging from the behavior, maybe not. Also, I looked at the picture earlier in the thread a bit more and I think part of the male under carapace can be a bit misleading. So, I'm not really sure now, and I can't get a good look anymore now that they are in the tank.

Also, I suppose it could also have been a "forced" sharing instead of a "volunteered" sharing But since they are hanging out near each other after-wards, maybe this was more of a volunteered sharing.

Update: I've just witnessed a skirmish this morning. But before I get into the details, let's label the crabs first so people don't get confused.

Crab #1 (C1): my original pom pom that I got about 4 months ago, it was anemone-less when I got it.
Crab #2 (C2): one of the two that I purchased 2 days ago, this one gave (or maybe had it taken) one of its anemone to C1.
Crab #3 (C3): second of the two that I purchased 2 days ago, had both anemones.

So at the point of my last post, C2 gave one anemone to C1 so they had one anemone each. C3 has 2, and I can tell them apart because C2's anemones and C3's anemones look different.

Well, this morning, lights weren't on yet, so I was watching the crabs doing their thing. C2 was sitting in the rocks, C3 was searching around a clump of caulerpa where a lot of bristle worms tend to gather. I've seen C1 eat bristle worms all the time, so I know they eat them and so I don't really feed C1 since there are plenty of worms in the tank.

C3 was able to grab a bristle worm and starts munching on it. At this point, I think C2 smelled the cut-open worm, and quickly moves from the rock towards C3. Then they gets into a little tangled ball as C2 jumps C3. In the struggle, C3 dropped the bristle worm, then C2 managed to grab a hold of one of C3's anemones, and starts munching on the anemone. I think maybe they were really hungry from sitting in the store for a week and in the heat of the moment, C2 didn't realize it was chewing on the anemone instead of the worm.

Then when C2 and C3 broke apart, C2 had managed to take that anemone from C3. Then a few seconds later, C3 attacks C2 again, and after some more struggle, C3 managed to take back its anemone from C2.

At this time, I noticed C1 had also come out of the rocks, perhaps smelling the worm. I also noticed that C1 had split its anemone that it got from C2 in two. So now C1 is hold two tiny miserable looking anemones.

C3's one anemone looks kinda torn up from C2 munching on it and then the two of them fighting over it.

At this point, I had to go catch my shuttle to come to school. The lights should also come on in a couple minutes which hopefully will calm down the crabs and make them go hide in the rocks.

I hope the poor anemones make it

Maybe I should feed them a bit for now so they aren't so hungry

Paratiddies & Koensayr, both your descriptions are priceless, I can see it in my mind like a cartoon film: Hey, that's MY nem, gimme! What adventures they must have, kidnapping each other's nems & worms, lol. Way better than SpongeBob Squarepants!!

About munching, is the mouth underneath the moving mouth parts? Does anyone know what the round white dot on the "chest" is? I've seen it sometimes flap open like an oven door, but have no idea what it is.

Lol, glad you were amused - there's some funny stuff that goes on in our tanks

If your crab has a rounded or oval shaped flap on it's chest it's a female, they store eggs between the flap and their bodies. My pom poms are both males but I used to have a female emerald that would always open it's flap and pick at it with her claws

I'm talking about the round white dot, above the area where females store eggs. They all have The Dot, male & female. I'm on my work computer or I'd point to it on a picture.

Hmm, not sure what that is

There's a picture of my crab in post #470 of this thread where you can clearly see the white circle. In that pic her right pincer is almost touching it.

It is well above the area on the abdomen that is differently-shaped in males & females.

PinkDamsel, I see the circle you are talking about. I"m not sure what it is. It is not the mouth.

Update on the crabs:
Now that things settled a bit, here's what's going on with the three crabs and their anemones.

After the fight between C3 and C2, it looks like C3 took back C2's original anemone while C2 kept the anemone it took from C3, so C3 now is holding a different anemone in each claw, but they are both in relatively good shape.

C2 has now also split its anemone and is holding one ok looking anemone and one very very tiny miserable-looking anemone. I hope that little chunk survives.

So now all three crabs have 2 anemones each.

I think one of my pom pom crabs left one of its tiny anemone (newly split) on top of my Poccilopora

They drop their nems when they molt. Maybe it molted and forgot to get it's nem back?

These stories are priceless. Haha, the fights must be hysterical to watch. I've only got one Pom Pom crab, Armand. Yep, still got the stud of the reef, as he's packing some serious nemage. Updated video. He looks really good. He's quite a bit larger than when I first got him, about as large as my largest porcelain crab, T-1000.



I should probably get him a woman, as all this prime manliness shouldn't be going to waste, but I really like that he's still got both nems and they're looking great to boot!

L

My girls are like ballerinas, always pointing their toes & doing arabesques, lol. But now that they both have pompoms, they're more like Dallas Cowgirls (is that the name of the famous Texas cheerleaders?).

Maybe your Dallas Cowgirls need themselves a Latin Lover...

Come hither, Armando, and maybe we'll undress (molt) for you . . . .

We're so hot, we've got red stripes all up & down our legs, all of them!

hey hey, let's keep this thread PG rated

What you think, sexy chicas??



You can see why the sexy shrimp just ran away. Armand IS the stud of the reef...

L

ROFLMAO that was hilarious! Love it!

Just witnessed one of my pom pom crabs molting in public. I guess this one wasn't shy.....

It actually started molting while holding both anemones.... then after it molted, it just grabbed the anemones from the shell.

Thats awesome that you got to witness that as mine is extremely shy...I hadnt seen her in over 3 months..

Do you have fish in your tank? I think this is partly due to the fact that I don't have any fish in my tank. The only things bigger than the crabs I have are snails and a tridacna clam.

Also, it seems if they have the anemones, they are bolder. But from the picture, looks like yours has her anemones?
I first got 1 crab without anemones, and there was a period of a month where I didn't see it even in my 5 gallon tank. Then I got other crabs with anemones, and this one managed to get 1. Then it started appearing more often.

Of course, that could also be due to having 3 crabs and maybe they don't like sharing the same hiding places and there just aren't that many hiding places in the 5 gallon for all 3 of them.

Do the nems open & close like corals?

Mine had nems that looked to be growing for awhile, then yesterday suddenly they are reduced to tiny stubs.

Mine get bigger and smaller.

You didn't see my video and I made it just for your girls, PinkDamsel! Sort of like a online dating profile. Armand wanted too.

Mine is with a fish, but honestly can anybody really refer to a panda goby as an intimidating fish?

L

Can hardly wait to see it! I'm stuck behind a corporate firewall, so have to get access to an unblocked computer,

My pompom is happy and doing great. Had him for approx 3 months now. He lives in a 40 breeder and is out all the time. His roomies are 2 clowns, 1 yellow head sleeper goby, 1 lawnmower bel., and a snowflake eel. Yes , a snowflake eel, and he doesn't bother anyone. Hell I even hand feed him his krill. So I don't believe tank size matters. Just my 2 pennies.

Well, I've had my two pom pom crabs for a few weeks now, and I've seen them roughly five times in a 55g.

I bought my two without nems (they were 50% off so I figured what the heck), and my friend bought two with nems, so we were gonna trade one each but I couldn't find any of mine lol, so I just dropped one of his in. A week later, I see his with only one nem, and I saw both of mine with one tiny one each, so it looks as though they are sharing.

Setting up a new, smaller system for them and a bunch of sexy shrimp, so hopefully I will see them more.

If a pom pom has 2 different nems in each claw, would the nems kill each other when the crab accidentally touches them?

If you read from my earlier post, after some fighting over nems, I ended up with 2 crabs with different nem in each claw. It looks like the ones with 2 different nems would have one nem doing much better (bigger), while the other one just shrinks to a tiny size. As of right now, the 2 with different nems: one only has one now, but that one looks healthy, the other one has 2 different ones, one looks much bigger, the other one is so tiny that it is almost invisible to the naked eye (and the one that is bigger looks almost transparent, might have ejected its zoozanthelle due to stress from fighting the other nem?)

What kind of anemone would it have picked up? I've never heard of one picking up another anemone other than the pom pom. They'll pick up various objects, but I've never seen them get another nem.

I bought 2 pom pom crabs each with 2 anemone. When I bought them, they each had 2 of the same anemone, but different from the other pom pom crab's anemone. I also had 1 pom pom crab already in the tank with no anemone.

After I introduced the 2 new crabs, one gave (or had it taken) one of its anemone to the anemone-less crab. Then in a fight with the other new crab, it took one of that crab's anemone, then that crab fought it back, but instead of taking back the same anemone, it ended up taken the different one, so it had 1 different anemone in each claw.

Did Nestlée murder Cosette?

Had to empty the tank Friday, and as I suspected, Cosette is no more; had not seen her since January. The question is, was she murdered by her own kind?

Mine is a 3-gallon. Nestlée, a female pompom, had been the only crab for a year. In December I got a second female, Cosette, about half Nestlée’s size.

At first, things were great. Nestlée had been nemless, but after Cosette arrived, I saw both crabs carrying nems. And while I never saw them exactly “together”, they were often just 2-3 inches apart. Never saw anything that looked threatening.

Next Cosette started hanging out on the very top of my rock, where Nestlée never goes. I wondered if she was more adventuresome, or maybe if below was Nestlée’s territory and she felt safer on top. Then I stopped seeing her altogether.

There’s nothing else in the tank that could possibly have killed Cosette – no fish, no shrimp, no large corals, just some cerith snails, and dwarves at that. And the tank has been very well fed (Nestlée’s growth confirms it), so it wasn’t starvation.

My sad conclusion is that Nestlée killed her. Someone else reported one pompom killing another, but I had hoped that was 2 males, and that 2 females would be OK. But in a 3-gallon, it would seem risky. She lasted a little over a month.

To add to the tragedy, Nestlée’s (stolen? shared?) nems were growing wonderfully, then late Feb. reduced to stubs, and finally were gone. IDK why this crab can’t hang onto her nems!

I bought three pom poms a while ago (one month? two? can't remember.), haven't seen more than two out at a time until today, moved everything around and pissed them all off. It's probably hiding in a hole in your rockwork.

I wish you were right! But I have a single ceramic rock w. indentations but no holes large enough for a crab. I took the whole thing out Friday, she's definitely not there.

I tried to be hopeful.

Thanks.

Tomorrow I will have a Pom Pom Crab! ^^ Yay!

Congrats! Where are you getting it from? My lfs only has them in Dec. so they seem like a seasonal item.

LFS in Hasselt, Belgium. They just got them in this week from Indonesia. Will cost 15 EUR (19.62 USD).

Got a pom pom for 15$!

Yikes! Mine were $6!

quick pic of my pom pom. Still don't know whether its a male or female yet.

You're also in FL. I'm in TN. Completely land-locked.

It's not like pom pom crabs are from anywhere around here. Some places will have them for $10-14.