How crabby is your crab?

[Eyford01]

So here's what I've been wondering: there are those that claim certain crabs are reef safe and some that tell horror stories about the same critters so please tell me have these relatively friendly crabs ever gone psycho in you tanks? So let's hear those stories!

[christyf5]

Hmm, I have a couple. Sally Lightfoot crab when I first started out. Man those are some cool looking crabs so I get one. All is well until my fish start disappearing. We're not talking tiny fish either. One day I turn out all the lights in the room and just sit quietly. I watch my SLF launch itself from a rock at a fish, repeatedly until he catches him. At that point I get in there with a spearing tool, rescue the fish and promptly take the rock out till I find the crab. Never again. I always wondered how he grew so fast and why I sucked at keeping fish



So I get a couple of emerald crabs to help out with the valonia problem in my tank. They start out both the same size but over the course of a year or so, one stays about the same size, the other is easily 5x the size (seriously, his claws were freakishly huge!!). I called one The Hulk and the other Bruce Banner Bruce passed on (just never saw him after awhile) and I eventually figured out that all The Hulk was interested in was my coralline algae, which I had fairly little of in the tank (as he was eating it all). He went to live in Victoria where there was scads of coralline to be had

Pom poms are my favorite, easy to care for, they survive the most horrific conditions (auto-topoff disaster, heat disaster, high salinity disaster, yes i've been through a lot of disasters ) never had a problem with them, they just keep on cheering for the home team!

[Leah]

Mine have all been fine Emeralds, Pom-Pom and my Sally-lightfooted that have sadly
been devoured in my tank

[Eyford01]

Uh oh! I forgot porcelin crabs hehe oops... Ok the part I'm really interested is has anyone ever had or heard of a killer or overly aggressive pom pom?

[BlueAbyss]

Never heard of a 'killer' pom pom crab. IMO these guys are probably the most reef safe crab.

I have an emerald who eats nothing but algae and is rarely seen during the day, though I can't really speak for his nocturnal habits... I have seen him moving around in the tank at night, but I don't think I've ever seen him near any of the corals.

[Leah]

Never heard of a killer Pom-Pom either, but it is a crab. I have Porcelain's and they do not seem
interested in anything but the rocks. They seem to do an awesome job.

[Aquaria]

i had to vote for definite emerald crab killr and peacefull emerald crab bcause i had 2, a really big one about 3-6 times the siz of my female(i watchd her hve babies so) and he ate a pepperment shrimp i only know this because of his repeted attemts to grab my clowns and shrimps snails and other crabs lol bastard since i got rid of him i have not had one problem :P

[whatcaneyedo]

I have 1 crab ATM. Its a blue leg hermit that lives in my sump. When I tried putting it into the main display it immediately began to tear at one of my snails. So in the sump is where it lives.

[Aleks]

My crab was a killer....I don't know what kind it was, but it may have just been a red crab? Anyhow, I left it in there for the better part of a year, and it was peaceful, would come out to eat when feeding time was around, was entertaining to watch and just kept getting bigger and bigger...Just in the last month my skunk cleaner shrimp went missing, and then I came home and my clown was missing half of his tail fin.....Time came to get rid of the crab which was seemingly outgrowing the nano reef environment. There were occasionally other crab bits showing up in the tank, claws, etc, and I had no idea where they came from. After getting rid of the big guy, I noticed there was a baby crab sitting on the back of my tuxedo urchin.....so I guess I may go thru this whole thing again....