Always a surprise

[Money pit]

I have about 3 of those guys, or something like them. So far all they do is pick at the rocks and eat food. Like reefwars mine only come out at night.

[FitoPharmer]

Originally Posted by lastlight

Wow what a badass looking crab. Hope he's at least getting to live in the sump.

The best thing to do with these guys is take them to a LFS that has triggers in stock

[toytech]

I thought mine only picked at the rocks too until i got some new turbos and they all disappeared in a week , then i found all there shells in a pile.

[toytech]

If he had eaten any of my fish i would have SMASHED HIM WITH A HAMMER but he didnt so now hes in my sump , hopefully , can they climb well?

[reefwars]

Originally Posted by toytech

If he had eaten any of my fish i would have SMASHED HIM WITH A HAMMER but he didnt so now hes in my sump , hopefully , can they climb well?

i dont think well enough to fight the flow coming out of your overflow but they can crawl up silicone

[Leah]

I was pulling rock out of my Q.T. and rearranging and I found a tiny crab.... thought nothing of it. I put the rock and crab back. Put my second cleaner shrimp in, as the first one didn't make it. A week later the new shrimp was half dragged under a rock...grr!!!
Then missing.

[Reef Pilot]

Had the crap scared out of me the other day when cleaning some live rock in my sink. Was rinsing it under the tap, and out crawls this 2 inch black ugly thing, looked like he was ready for a fight. I nearly dropped the rock.

And this live rock is 10 years old in this tank, so he must be pretty old....

Have never seen a crab before in my tank, probably have a few others then, that never show themselves.

Use to have a big Green Bird Wrasse, that would need anything that resembled a crab, shrimp or snail. But I guess he never found this one.

How long do these crabs live?

[asylumdown]

I had 3 of those exact guys in my 90. To be honest I kind of liked them, they never bothered any of my snails and seemed to go after all sorts of detritus. They started out about 1cm across, and by the time I broke the tank down they were close to the size of the crab in the pic, one of them even started carrying around clutches of eggs!

I had more problems with hermit crabs eating snails

[Lance]

Crabs are opportunistic feeders and will sooner or later take out something of value. There is no such thing as a nice crab! Oh wait.........a dead crab is a nice crab. KILL IT!!!

[ponokareefer]

It makes the idea of using dry rock that much more appealing than buying more expensive live rock. I wish they had dry rock around when I started up. I'm surprised people still buy live rock with all the benefits of dry rock.