we had one of those crabs and it was eating our acro's so we bainshed him to the fuge were he later died!!

when i used to have sps, i had some pieces with the same crabs with no ill affects.

had the white "masked" crabs... these fuzzies with blue eyes, and also red crabs.

they are interesting symbiotic inhabitants, provided they are well behaved as mine were, or if they cause very little damage to the sps so that it is not detrimental.

ciao

Glad to hear you caught it!

I have an acro crab myself, and a couple porcelain crabs, none have caused any damage(gladly), and my acro crab is quite large, at least for an acro crab. Hehe. I also had a large fuzzy red-eyed crab in there that did no damage to my corals, or fish...? I did remove him however.

Chris

I released the crab into my cube tank which has no SPS (nor ever will as it's a species setup for my ritteri). He promptly buried himself into the sand.

He definitely ate down the polyps of my hoeksemai, you can totally tell where he was eating them even 3 days later. There are only nubs left behind whereas on the rest of the coral there is full polyp expansion.

My hope is that the crab is not an obligate polyp feeder. Should he be an opportunistic scavenger, like most crabs, he ought to be OK in there and not be a nuisance to anything.

found a thread on RC condemning these crabs... fifth post from the bottom
http://www.reefcentral.com/forums/sh...hreadid=729835
Glad you got him