Kinda made me sick, but the boulder method in a baggie it is was :cry: :cry: :cry:

Poor little guy didn't even see it coming. Fast for the crab, but definitely not easy on the human :cry: :cry: :cry: :cry:

Just hope the CSI team doesn't get wind of the corpse in our trash can :eek:

darnit! no! no more crab killing! :evil: although i understand that there were no alternatives... still a bummer to have to do that though. looks like i'm going to end up with a tank stocked with everyone elses rejects when i actually get set up.

Well, you didn't even have to do it, I did :cry: Not the most pleasant task to do before breakfast, either, but it was the most humane way of doing it.

teevee, you wouldn't have wanted that crab in your reef if you saw the way it was munching on the star polyp frags I'd just put in that nano. Good thing I checked the tank before going to bed, cuz I'm sure that frag and other one would have both been decimated by morning :evil:

Dang, now I've got a headache over all this :sad:

Everybody take care.

I've got to say, it's bold of you to detail this whole process, one that many (all?) of us have been through but few talk about openly, or admit to. Part of managing the care of the animals we end up with can be unpleasant yet necessary - sometimes 'pests' must meet their end at our hands.

Thanks for being open and honest, even when the end result would prove unpopular with the very sensitive. And thanks to respondents for lack of flames.

Cheers,

obviously it's a shame that a critter that made it several thousand miles, was banged around in a dark box, thrown into water that probably wasn't what he was used to, and all this multiple times, only to be smashed with a rock, but that's life isn't kinda. kinda ironic in a sense, we pay money for some creatures and try to kill others. :confused: i'm sure i'll run into this dilemma soon enough.

I would have probably first tried to see if an LFS would take it, but, that's just me.

Congratulations Bev, that is a beautiful Alpheid shrimp...I wish it was mine :cry: As far as the crab goes, it is a Mithrax spp. (I didn't read all the posts as I don't have much time, so if this info is redundant then sorry..) and it is definately going to have a negative impact on your reef at some point...most crabs do.

Stephen

In my honesty, I admit I was looking to others for help finding solutions to our reef problems. The shrimp was saved, thank goodness, but the crab had a very different fate :cry:

There's a deep sadness in me today over this event :cry: In some sort of honour to the crab, I did my weekly maintenance on all three of our reefs, the 42 gal hex, and the 7 gal and 2.5 gal nanos. Cleaning the tanks and filtration systems, and changing water was done with great reverence to the dead crab, and to the creatures I cherish so much who are all still alive and well.

Thank you to everyone who helped ID the hitchhikers we found. Thanks, too, to the folks who offered suggestions as to what to do with the unwanted crab.

FWIW, I had a chance to make it over to the lfs after my appointments this afternoon and spoke to the staff about what they'd have done with the crab if they had taken it. Yes, they would have fed it to "Bubba" the Picasso trigger. So which fate would any of you have chosen for the crab? The rock or the trigger? Right now neither choice sits very well with me, but something had to be done. So I did it. :cry: :cry: :cry:

Thank you all again.

if bubba is the trigger at AI, i would have chosen to feed the crab to the trigger. that guy needs a snack, he nearly took my finger off last time i was there. :biggrin:

Yup, that's the trigger.

What the heck are you doing with your fingers in a trigger tank :eek:

If we're able to catch the second crab we saw in the 42 last night, if time permits, I'll take it to AI. One way or the other, that crab'll be a goner too :frown:

umm petting the fish... yeah pretty stupid i know. if i had a FOWLR tank a picasso would be the first thing i'd put in there. i absolutely love them.

you don't have any sumps eh? if you did i'd tell you to stick the crab in there.

i think someone was wondering about how humane freezing an animal to death is. i will confirm that it is. as your body gets colder, you simply fall asleep. this is why when they find someone who's frozen to death, the person is generally lying in the fetal position. curled up, yes, but not from the cold as much as the fact that it's just how people often sleep. of course there's no way to prove this also applies to crabs, but let's assume it does. apparently one of the easiest ways to go.

Yeah, about as stupid as me trying to kiss my cute little python. They carry salmonella, so no lips to my snake, that's for sure, even though I adore him :cool:

Nope. No sumps on the 2.5 or the 7 gal nanos :lol:

Not even one on the 42 hex. Kinda not techmologically evolved enough to have a sump on it. Didn't have a sump on our 180 when we had it either.

Actually, before you freeze to death your brain releases endorphins to help deal with the pain and you reach a state of euphoria. Apparently its a great way to go. I don't think it works that way for fish tho. Their brain isn't complex enough.

Christy :)

ah shoot first year psyc versus bio grad. i can't touch it :cool: my prof said it was an easy way to go, but he could very well be wrong. how about we agree not to kill critters at all. if it really comes down to it, then trigger food. :neutral:

well yes, it is an easy way to go. But there are many differences between a human and a fish.

oop right misread your post there. thought you said "apparently it's not a great way to go". good enough then! you present a valid argument. i guess the other question though is, if they aren't developed enough to have the mechanisms necessary to release endorphins, how do we know they are complex enough to feel pain? :razz:

Personally, with the animals in my care, I offer them something vicariously.... :neutral:

Optimum care, to the best of my ability.

These are cold blooded creatures we are talking about...They don't even feel the effects of temperature the same way we do. It is humane to put them down in the freezer because their metabolisms just slow down and stop. They don't get cold...

Stephen

Hmm.... They probably don't feel temps the exact way we do, but they must feel temps in some manner. If they didn't, the same species of crab/fish/coral/whatever would be found in a variety of different temp zones in the oceans and seas, which is not the case.

You're right that they have blood, and it's red, too. I found that out with the rock and a hard place killing method with that crab the other day :eek: :eek: :cry:

I suppose it's easier emotionally for some folks to put a creature in the freezer then take them out dead in a day or two, even though no one really knows how the freezing process actually affects the creature during the process. I, for one, would nevr do it that way. Seems like it would prolong death, especially compared to a single good whack that'll kill instantly. Geez, now I sound like a hitman, which, is not even near how I feel about killing animals :frown:

Tried to catch the second crab in our reef last night, but was unsuccessful. Then I had bad dreams all night about different methods of killing the poor guy and the thing just would not stop moving no matter what was done to it :cry: :cry: :cry:

What a gruesome f**cking topic :cry: :exclaim: :exclaim:

Beverly

Think of a snake, it gets cold it slows down and goes to sleep, when the morning comes it layes on the warm rocks or soil to adsorb heat so it can move quickly again.. the snake isn't in pain every time night comes is it? this would be the same for a fish.. as the temp drops it gets slugish and falls asleep well befor the point it is frozen.

Steve

To quote Christy: "Actually the fish remains breathing even while its cells and blood are forming ice crystals"

That is what I believe happens with the freezer method, though I have no scientific proof to back it up. Oxygen depletion in the water as it freezes may also make the crab suffer, though, again no scientific proof on that either. And because I also believe a creature as primitive as a crab still has some sort of way to feel pain, the crab would suffer.

As for snakes, I happen to own one and know a little bit about them, and they're very different from tropical ocean-dwelling crabs :rolleyes:

Yes, snakes get cold at night and warm themselves during the day with no harm done. But they seek places where they will keep the warmest at night, even though at night their bodies do cool, sometimes considerably cooler than during the day.

But you're rarely going to find a snake that lives in a place that freezes, except a few species in the Alberta badlands and those that live in the BC interior and other such northern places that experience freezing winter temps. They most likely seek deep hiding places where they can hibernate without freezing. Either that, or they can actually freeze with no harm done, though I somehow doubt the latter. These particular snakes would be the exception to the rule as most snakes live is pretty warm climates where winter or nighttime temps do not freeze.

Then there are certain species of frogs that dig themselves into the mud and freeze during the winter, then come back to life in the spring thaw to look for mates before the insect populations return. Actually saw this on HGTV's "Secret World of Gardens" the other day.

To sum up, I don't think comparing snakes, frogs or whatever, to tropical crabs is a way to gain points in the discussion of using the freezer killing method. Each creature is different in habitat, and how it lives and dies in that habitat.

I'd still never freeze a tropical animal to kill it. Never, never, never. Even though the rock method makes the death up close and personal, and is sickening to do for the human (me, to be precise), that is the only way I will ever kill any mobile critter from our reefs.

I will bet you did not know that houseflies freeze solid during the winter, and happily come back to life when it warms up. A couple of years ago I picked up some flies that looked frozen, and put them in a jar. When I brought the jar indoors, the flies came back to life. :eek: :eek:

Nope, didn't know that one.

Did you know that there are vents deep in the ocean that spew the hottest, foulest stuff from beneath the earth's crust that have bacteria feeding off the very hot, very foul stuff? I wonder how scientists get samples of these bacteria when the area is so hot :eek: Heck, I wonder about how scientists find out about all kinds of strange things :question: :question: :question:

actually now that i think about it that sounds right, because i have to monitor my turtle's hot rock temperature because if it malfunctions and gets too hot, she won't be able to tell and will sit on it while it burns her.

bob just how much time do you have on your hands? :razz:

ROTFLMAO :exclaim: :exclaim:

Actually, that was the kid in me laughing at your little kid in you razzing the little kid in Bob with his flies :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol:

Actually I had a lot of time on my hands. This was when we were building the Caroline Gas plant. I was in charge of the yard where we stored our electrical supplies. There was a big tent where the lights were stored. That is where I found the flies, and my investigative curiosity was aroused. :razz: :razz:

I don't know if she wouldn't be able to tell. I think it's more like the hot rock is the only known warm spot in her house, so she stays there even if it gets too warm.

They sell those hot rock things for snakes too. But the book I have about ball pythons, which is the kind of snake we have, says to stay away from hot rocks completely. Better to use a heat lamp with a built in temp control sliding thingamajig, or an under tank heating sheet. With the heat lamp, in a large enough living area, the snake or whatever, can choose the place it wants to be whether it's right under the lamp or just off to the side where it's slightly cooler, or not under it at all.

We have both lamp and under tank heaters for our snake. He prefers the heat lamp and often curls up in the shade of a fake plant to be slightly cooler, and probably to be hidden like snakes like to do.

provided it was actually a mithrax, i would have put him into one of the other tanks and waited to see if he ate anything in there. people buy these guys to take care of bubble algae....

Yup, put him in the 2.5 gal to see what he'd do in there. That night just before going to bed, thought I'd check the 2.5 to see what the crab was up to. There he was dining on our star polyps :evil: He went directly into an old, clean yogurt container in some tank water.

For the next few days, I woudn't have had the opportunity to take him to the AI unless I took him with me on my appointments all out in the west end :eek: Heck I coulda tried the freezer method on him with the cold spell we had that week by just leaving him in the car while I went on my appointed rounds :eek: :eek: Instead, I whacked him to get his and my misery over with asap :cry: