First bad hitch hiker, white eye hairy acro crab.

[theokie]

I was at a total loss as to why two acros where having tissue loss. Well that was until I spotted a white eyed acro crab hanging out in the coral directly in between the two suffering corals. This coral is thriving, a montipora confusa, where as my prostrata and millipora where declining rapidly.

At first I was ecstatic as I love all the surprise critters I'm finding as my reef approaches the one year mark.

As with every new find in my tank, google is my friend, and I was finding conflicting info regarding acro crabs. Though like other crabs it appears that "hairy" is bad, "smooth" is good. Well my white eyed little friend is of the hairy variety, and after lights out I find him 5 inches from the confusa munching away on the prostrata.

The hunt began, and boy do these little guys hold on tight to the coral host. I needed up having to remove the coral from my tanking, damaging the base, breaking a tip, but the offender did not budge during the extraction.

In order to get the offender off the coral it took two sets of forceps and a violent swirling.

image by MechEcub, on Flickr

image by MechEcub, on Flickr