lostdog Posted July 11, 2003 Share Posted July 11, 2003 I've got a hitchhiker crab thats about the size of a quarter that I'm concerned about. He's covered in hair and his legs have purple rings on them. I saw him trying to get my peppermint shrimp as it swam by. I also noticed my Emerald crab lost his front legs (not sure if it's related to the other crab or not). Link to comment
lostdog Posted July 13, 2003 Author Share Posted July 13, 2003 I know it helps to post a pic, but I just found another thread that has the same crab. http://www.nano-reef.com/forums/showthread...iry+purple+crab Looks like I'm going to have to try and catch it now... Link to comment
SteveC Posted July 17, 2003 Share Posted July 17, 2003 It really helps if you specify whether your rock is Caribbean/Atlantic or Indo-Pacific. However, I have learned the hard way that any crab you can't identify needs to be removed (preferably to another tank or your fuge--it might turn out to be something cool!). Actually, even the ones you can identify should probably be caught and examined up close, as several species of mimics exist... Link to comment
lostdog Posted July 17, 2003 Author Share Posted July 17, 2003 If you look at my sig, you'll see I have gulf aquacultured LR... Link to comment
SteveC Posted July 17, 2003 Share Posted July 17, 2003 Oops, sorry. On other, non-aquaria forums I've gotten into the habit of automatically ignoring everything below the line. Now that I'm reading NR again I'll have to remember to look! Since it's gulf rock, I can tell you that you definitely want to get that nasty little bugger out of your tank. I have three of them (a bit darker than the one in the photo but the same pattern), the largest of which is no bigger than a nickel. I had left them in there because they were (1) hard to catch and (2) munching on red hair algae (I couldn't get a good look at them and I thought they might be baby Sally Lightfoots because of that--wrong!). One day I got a fighting conch, easily one of the coolest critters I've ever seen. I loved it. My wife loved it. The next day it was dead, and it was perfectly healthy and looked happy when I went to bed. During the night, that nasty little crab dragged it over to a crack between rocks (where the crab lived) and used the leverage to yank it right out of its shell. The empty conch shell was right beside the crevice and most of the conch meat was still intact under the rock--the meat was larger than the crab. The crab killed it for a nibble! And I had even put some food in front of known crab holes (including that one) beforehand because I was introducing new critters! The crab wasn't hungry, it was pure evil! Over the next month (while I was trying to find ways to catch those nasty little buggers) it or its little pals murdered two turbo snails (small ones). I wasn't absolutely sure they were the ones who killed the turbos (the only other possible culprits were scarlet reef hermits which are pretty docile) until I'd gotten the biggest crab out and put him in the "cornfield" (a 5 gal prison tank which will be my fuge soon) which also held some blue leg hermits, one of which has a turbo shell. As soon as that crab saw the turbo shell moving around he went right over to it and grabbed it, only to be faced with an unusually large and nasty blue leg hermit, at which point he lost interest. Strangely, they seemed to leave the astrea snails alone. It took forever to catch them. They don't fall for traps very easily. I had better luck waiting for them to come out of their holes and crawl around on the rock, then picking up the rock while pressing them against it with a finger so they couldn't move. Then I'd pull 'em off and put 'em out in the cornfield. I still have them since I refuse to kill critters if I can house them somewhere, and I find them quite interesting now that they're no longer a threat to the inhabitants of my nano. If yours is the size of a quarter, get it out of there before it makes a meal out of your entire tank. If you don't have a place to keep it, I know there used to be a guy on this forum whose signature indicated that he would take crabs of all types (because he enjoyed them, not because he had an octopus to feed). Link to comment
lostdog Posted July 18, 2003 Author Share Posted July 18, 2003 That little *#&*$! Tonight I got home, and he had climbed up the intake on my HOB filter (where my clown sleeps) and I think he was trying to get him. I need to get that crab out ASAP! Link to comment
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