Nasty Crab
 

Just found a big nasty looking crab. I think he is a mithrax. Any thoughts on catching him?

Bev has had limited success baiting a tumbler and setting it in the tank at a 45 degree angle. If you catch him, do you have a sump he can live in? It always seems a shame to me that an animal that managed to survive a plane ride from the south pacific has to die because he was in the wrong place at the wrong time.

I was thinking of dropping him in my sump as a cleaner upper or seeing if anyone on the board here wanted it..

I'll give the tumbler a shot. Thanks

The last crab I tried to trap the way Quinn explained would not take the bait even after setting the trap three nights in a row. Since the tank it was in had no inhabitants yet, I pulled out all the rock where I thought the crab would be and looked it over with my reading glasses and flashlights. Examined rock went into a pail of outgoing changewater from another tank.

Didn't find him on the way out of the tank, so looked over each rock again before putting it back into the tank. Found the HUGE monster in a very deep hole. Used a cable tie to poke at him from holes in the top of the rock and he quickly crawled out and we caught it. Took it to the lfs as food for their wrasse/trigger.

Here's a rather poor photo of the crab comparing its size to a quarter:

http://www.lostmymarblz.com/hh-bw-72gal-hitchhikers.htm

Glad to have that sucker out of the tank as it is slated to house very young captive bred seahorses :biggrin:

I'm pretty sure I have his brother in my tank

:lol: :lol: :lol:

I've taken a lot of those same crabs from my tanks over the past few months. They're pretty scary looking and I don't want them anywhere near my tanks :evil:

Just curious as to why you want to get rid of the crabs?

These are red eyed crabs that can be rather aggressive. I especially don't want them in a captive bred (or even wild caught) seahorse tank.

Here is a page about this crab:

http://mangrove.nus.edu.sg/pub/seashore/text/216.htm

put a cleaned out babyfood jar in next to the crab's hole last night. Baited it with a slice of shrimp. So far no luck.

May have to go for the rock extraction method...

I baited my small trap for an emerald crab I thought had died, but is still in there eating my coraline :evil: Darned if my grey brittle star didn't sneak over and have a nice dinner from the trap :rolleyes:

Will try again tonight, though, in a different location.

Tearing down a tank is the last resort method of crab removal. They have hiding places so deep in the rock that you may not even be able to find it. We did two passes on the rock with flashlights and me in my reading glasses before we caught the crab out of the new CB seahorse tank. We were very, very lucky imo.