Boxing Crab
 

It amazes me to always be finding new things after 2 years of reefkeeping. Thanks to Christy who pointed these out to me after we bumped into each other today.

What's intriguing (which some of you might know, but its new to me) is that these crabs use anemones as their defense mechanism. They hold onto these tiny anemones with their claws all day long.

http://www.hyperdream.com/~samw/reef...g_crop_std.jpg

Lookies, eggs in the belly of 1 of them

http://www.hyperdream.com/~samw/reef...g_crop_std.jpg

I got one from King Eds too, theyre amazing!
Were there anymore left or did you take them all? :lol:

Nice pics btw :razz:

I got the last 3. :lol:

crab
 

Should this be a crab and not a shrimp ?

Good Job :lol:
I wanted to get more though
I haven't seen mine around since I put him in :cry:

Hey Sam,
This is the Boxer Crab or Pom-pom Crab Lybia tesselata

It is a favourite of mine an is certainly not new to the hobby. As it has a small size it is often overlooked in tanks. Plus so many reefers unfortunately group all crabs into the "bad for reef" category.

I like to keep them in 10 gallon or smaller mini reefs. I find anything larger and you rarely see them.
There are 3 species that I know of, the most common is the one you have.
2nd is the Hawaiian endemic Lybia edmondsoni which instead of a polygon pattern has a maze like pattern on the carapace. The 3rd which I've only seen in pictures is Lybia caestifera from the Red Sea to Japan area. All of which are shallow water reef crabs.

They all remain small growing to 1.5cm across. They carry a non-fish commensal anemone Triactis producta. It is a fairly aggressive anemone with a strong sting.
I find the behaviour quite fascinating as they drag the anemone along the bottom collecting detritus on the tentacle mucus, then they run it across their mouthparts to remove the food particles like they are licking an ice cream cone. During moulting they set aside the anemones unfortunately losing them sometimes.

I personally found that they didn't tend to adopt other replacement species anemones when one was lost.

When they are threatened or my peering eyes got to close they would raise both anemones and sway them in either circular or side to side motion to ward me off. Most of the time they were fairly cryptic remaining shy even after a few years of feeding. They never bothered any of my coral or fish.

Anyways, a wonderful addition.[/i]

Re: crab
 

Yup. Fixed. Thanks. :)

Oh, thanks for the info Van.

thoes are to cool, lets hope they don't start pushing thoes anemones against your corals :eek: . see we never get cool stuff like that :mrgreen:

Steve

Very nice colored crabs...oh oh..yup,there it is..the galloping gimmees!
now I'm going to have to call around untill I find one :frown: :mrgreen:


Jim