Crabs: To have or have not

[fishytime]

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....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.....

[fishoholic]

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.

[Lance]

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

[parkinsn]

Originally Posted by Lance

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

[lastlight]

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.

[Lance]

Originally Posted by lastlight

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.

[whatcaneyedo]

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.

[IronRising]

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.