Crabs: To have or have not
 

I've read all kinds of opinions from one end of the spectrum to the other:

"Crabs are terrorists--don't let any of them in your tank." to
"I love my crabs, they don't bother anything, and they help keep everything clean."

So tell me, do you have any crabs in your tank, what kind, how many, and do you like them or not? Do they do damage or not? And how big is your tank?

Thanks all,

I have 10-15 blue leg hermits, and a tiger pistol shrimp, so I'm not really sure how many are left. Its fun to watch them wander around, and I guess they help to clean my tank can't really tell. I keep buying them so I guess I like them.
they seem to leave everthing alone in my tank as far as I can tell, but I also don't have a lot of too expensive corals so if they eat one or two well thats nature.

Ive had an alright experience with hermit crabs. I havent had any issue with them eating the coral that i have in the tank but the little bastards will knock over frags if they arent glued or secured down. I did find they like to fight and kill eachother, ive lost over 50% of the ones i bought from day one. I personally enjoy seeing a few roam around while exploring the tank but i wouldnt go nuts with them, a couple is good enough for me, Ive found my snails do more work especially when it comes to cleaning the glass.

I bought an emerald crab a few months ago to try to clean up some bubble algae, didnt work. I havent had any issues with him either but he does seem to be always ****ed off. If you point at him he tries to pinch you!

i have an emerald crab and no bother from him at all

I love my crabs. :wink: My favorite is Porcelain crabs. But I have had Emeralds, Decorator, Pink Hawaiian, Blue legged hermits and Scarlet hermits.And I have Pom poms too! All my tanks have crabs. I also have a sally light footed. Almost forgot she is in my 25 gal. :redface:

Crabs is crabs......they are opportunistic and take what is available to them......Ive never had any issues with my crabs and coral, but all hermits are covert operatives in an underwater terrorist cell known to be responsible for countless snail-jackings:spy:....that being said I have several crabs in my tanks....Halloween, left-handed, scarlet, and blue-knuckled hermies in both tanks and pom poms and two different species of porcelain crabs in the small tank.......crabs are to interesting a critter not to have in a reef IMO.....

I find my blue and red leg hurmit crabs kill off all my snails. Personally I think the snails do a better job of cleaning and if I had it all to do over I would just stick to snails, although I do admit crabs are fun to watch.

Crabs are bad!!! KILL THEM!!! (or banish them to the sump or give to someone with a Mantis shrimp or crab-eating fish.)

I was waiting for that post :lol:

Having agreed with Lance so many times before I'd like to add that I currently do have a pair of porcelains and I really do think they're a safe addition.

Yes Brett, I will give you that. If you want to keep a crab, Porcelains are ok.

The only crab I like is the porcelain. At this time I do not have any crabs in my system and its been that way for a few years. Back when I had blue leg hermits (2004?) I caught them picking all of the spines off of my large brittle star. It looked like a serpent star until I removed all of the crabs and the spines grew back. I once tried to add a single electric blue leg hermit to my display. It immediately went after a fighting conch so I had to remove it right away.

I also had a chalice frag go from this to the pic below because of a gorilla crab that was hiding out next to it. Once I removed the crab the chalice recovered to its former state.

http://i254.photobucket.com/albums/h...Picture697.jpg

http://i254.photobucket.com/albums/h...icture1238.jpg

Crabs killing stuff
 

Just a quick note to all those who say crabs kill snails and one another, its mostly because they want new shells! I had that problem and went an bought a handful of empty shells and put them behind my rock so it did not look bad in my display. Solved the problem as far as i can tell.

What about killing fish? Anybody think their crabs killed a fish?

Other than a few poached snails I've never had a problem with hermits. Though I will say that if anything happens to your tank and corals get stressed, blue legged hermit crabs will pick at the decomposing tissue and possibly prevent recovery/hasten demise.

I guess if you've got expensive shelled creatures that you really like and spent a lot of money on, they'd be something to be careful about. I've always looked at my snails as the vacuum cleaners of my tank and nothing more, so needing to replace a couple of nassarius snails every now and then doesn't really stress me out or lead me to think that crabs are bad.

I had several hitchhiker crabs come in on my rock, the big black ones with the hairy legs were supposed to be all evil or something. I never had a problem with them they were actually some of my favourite tank denizens.

I gave mine an assortment of shells of different shapes and sizes too... they still seem to like what the snails are wearing better. ;) I like having them in my tank though. My Zebra hermit crabs seem to be the most aggressive with snails and other hermit crabs.

+ 1 on the variety of types and sizes :)