p3rmafrost January 31, 2023 Share January 31, 2023 Hello Everyone! I recently added a porcelain crab to my tank to keep my GBTA and RBTA clean. It's doing a great job and has been a really fun addition to the tank, but the little dude is pretty weird sometimes. This morning when I went to feed the fish I noticed that it had crawled into the mouth of the anemone and was cleaning the oral disc. It eventually got out, but it made for a strange photo. I wanted to share with the group, enjoy! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Abe January 31, 2023 Share January 31, 2023 Great picture! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Origami February 1, 2023 Share February 1, 2023 Porcelain crabs are pretty neat. In the wild, they develop symbiotic or mutalistic relationships with anemones. I can't say that I've seen it as much in our reef tanks, though. Enjoy! Great picture. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
p3rmafrost February 1, 2023 Author Share February 1, 2023 9 hours ago, Origami said: Porcelain crabs are pretty neat. In the wild, they develop symbiotic or mutalistic relationships with anemones. I can't say that I've seen it as much in our reef tanks, though. Enjoy! Great picture. It's uncommon in the home reef environment? Mine went to the GBTA within 10 minutes and hasn't left since. It preens the GBTA all day long. At night it holds on to a tentacle and sleeps. I guess I got lucky. Between the clowns and the crab my BTAs are pretty well taken care of. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Origami February 1, 2023 Share February 1, 2023 It's uncommon in the home reef environment? Mine went to the GBTA within 10 minutes and hasn't left since. It preens the GBTA all day long. At night it holds on to a tentacle and sleeps. I guess I got lucky. Between the clowns and the crab my BTAs are pretty well taken care of. I said that I hadn't seen it. That doesn't make it uncommon. When I had porcelain crabs, for example, they were hitchhikers and I didn't yet have an anemone. And, in the years since, I've had anemones then got rid of them, but really never got back to the porcelain crabs.But, maybe you got lucky, too. It's a neat relationship.Nature's drive is strong. Over the years, I've had clownfish host, not only anemones, but also both soft and hard corals. And, in the strangest case, a friend had a clown host a snowflake eel. Now that was weird. Sent from my Note 10+5g using Tapatalk Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
p3rmafrost February 1, 2023 Author Share February 1, 2023 Wow! A clown hosting an eel, that's wild. I picked this crab up at Centreville Aquarium, they had an eel that had a clownfish buddy. I don't know if it was hosting it or not, but it looked like it. My wife and I were pretty surprised the eel didn't snap at it. My clowns refused to go anywhere near my anemones until one day I had guests over, there was about 6 people looking into the tank, the clowns got spooked, darted into the anemone and that's all she wrote. I have a pistol shrimp and I tried pairing him up with Gobys a few times, I'm fairly certain that he killed them, or they're are hide-n-seek world champions. I eventually picked up a 3 inch yellow watchman from a member here and they paired up instantly. I guess the shrimp wanted a fish with a little more muscle. Like you said, nature's drive is strong. Life on the reef is weird. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Create an account or sign in to comment
You need to be a member in order to leave a comment
Create an account
Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!
Register a new accountSign in
Already have an account? Sign in here.
Sign In Now