Urgent: Unknown Crab In Tank

[ColbytheClown]

Hi so I just looked in my tank and a saw a white crab with I think red on it living INSIDE one of my corals. Is it dangerous?? Should I take it out and kill it. Please, urgent. Will it harm my corals? It went back into the Coral so I don't know how I will get it out. Any thoughts?? Sorry for the picture quality. It is the white thing next to the coral. Hard to see.

 

[Hong]

Good crabs.

Bad crab.

 

[Janice]

So take him out??

 

[Janice]

what is the name of the "bad crab" you have shown the picture of?

 

[Janice]

I think I figured out that it is a stone crab and that it has been eating my "missing" hermit crabs, that I had assumed were just hiding, as I have been filing some empty hermit crab shells.

 

[BIGSHOW]

sometimes called Gorilla crabs.

Some signs of bad crabs.
- They are hairy (most good crabs are smooth shelled)
- Claws end in points (good crabs don't usually need points as they harvest algae where a sharpened tip is not needed, good example is the emerald crab with round discs as points), acro crabs excluded from this
- Large (most large crabs are bad, bigger the crab the more livestock he is able to eat)
- They cause a nasty inch....just kidding, those are also bad crabs but shouldn't survive in your aquarium

Rule of thumb is if you don't know for sure if said hitchhiker is bad its best to remove it. You can put in your sump or maybe give to someone to feed to a trigger or another fish that eats them.

 

[Janice]

Thanks!

 

[Hong]

what is the name of the "bad crab" you have shown the picture of?

Yeah, what Bigshow said.

 

[Kman]

Here is a good link to crabs with pictures.

https://reefbuilders.com/2015/09/25/an-introduction-to-coral-crabs-good-and-bad/

 

[Janice]

Thanks for your help everyone. A very responsive group. We cant tell exactly which one he is from the pics-but we did see him taking off with a new turbo snail. So we will try to do the bottle trick with food inside to get him out tonight.

 

[ColbytheClown]

Good news!! After the first 2 days of him not wanting to take the bait, we finally gave up. We grabbed the coral out of the water, put tweeters inside the coral and grabbed him. Finally that's over with. He was eating all of our snails and hermit crabs!!!!!!

 

[Janice]

tweezers

 

[nathan]

tweezers

Lol