Emerald crab eating SPS polyps

[gmerek2]

Got to spot feed these guys or they will do this oh well plenty more where that came from

 

 

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[bk_market]

I caught 2 huge one picking polyps off my sps colony also. They went into the sump. Usually they do this when they get big.

 

 

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[miggs76]

Happened to me too. Will never put them in my tank again!

[YHSublime]

Wow, caught red handed

 

 

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[dangros]

I’ve always worried about mine. It’s HUGE. I had an electric blue leg hermit that would ravage my coralline algae but it eventually died.

[treesprite]

I have had the same experience, so I stopped getting emerald crabs years ago. Target feeding won't stop them from picking.

[Neto]

All crabs are evil

[sen5241b]

WOW!  I have an emerald that has grown quite big in the last few months and then a couple weeks ago I find my thriving birdsnest broken off and dead. 

[malacoda]

Similar experience here.  Had two red mithrax crabs in my 24g, one of which developed quite the taste for acans.

[gmerek2]

FREE emerald crab lol. Jk it will get sumped if It starts affecting the coral.

[treesprite]

FREE emerald crab lol. Jk it will get sumped if It starts affecting the coral.

If your refugium is big enough, maybe it would eat just enough to keep you from having to harvest macros, without wiping them out.

 

I had almost forgotten that mithrax crabs exist as an option for algae control in situations where they can't kill anything that matters. The tank I set up recently has a bunch of hair algae, and all I have left for SPS right now are things I've not seen emerald crabs pick on, so yesterday I put a couple little ones in the tank. I just have to fish them back out when they start getting destructive.... usually I just tie a piece of seafood to a string, so hopefully that will work when the time comes. I don't want to get any more corals until the alage is gone.

(Sort of off-topic note: I purchased them at Petco on Rockville Pike. One of the tanks had a pile of maybe 8 dead fish laying in a bunch on the bottom of a different tank. The kid claimed there had been dottybacks in the tank killing them, until someone bought the dottybacks the day before, but a lot of the other fish looked pretty bad. If the dottyback story is true, I feel sorry for whoever bought those dottybacks. And how stupid of Petco staff to put dottybacks in atank with less aggressive fish).

Edited January 7, 2018 by treesprite