Please Help Me

[seanyt66]

Hi all

I have a mystery crab which i have seen briefly from time to time - i got quite a good look at it last night, it has brown and white stripey legs with a beige coloured body and black claws. it seems to have doubled in size since the first time i spotted it and is currently about the size of a fifty pence piece.

Is this something i should be worried about or just a harmless hitchiker that came in on my live rock?

Thanks in advance

Sean

 

[dilbert]

There are lots of similar species. A generic name for those is "gorilla crab" what stricltly refers only to the hairy ones.

Apart from the stripey legs the description fits one that I had or still have in my pico.
Only that one was quite smaller. It sat always inside a hole of the live rock and never moved around. When challenged, it ran away like a spider does.

It changed that hole twice presumably because I could watch in there and then i have never seen it again. I found only a molt with those black claws about two month ago.

Generally, every crab is omnivore and is a potential risk. But I remember where someone wrote in a posting: "he is strong but he's a pacifist".


PS:
Here's the link:
http/www.talkingreef.com/forums/archive/...php/t-1449.html

 

[seanyt66]

Thanks Dilbert, i followed the link and looked a pics of some crabs and mine looks most like a stone crab - do you think thats a possibility?

Sean

 

[dilbert]

I guess that only when your live rock comes from the Caribean or your LFS had also Caribean live rock once in their tanks.

Unfortunately, I don't have the links anymore but there are image databases with literally hundreds of those on the Web. I believe that Xanthidae was a family of quite common hitchhiker crabs, too.

 

[seanyt66]

I got a good look at em last night - there are three! ive looked a pics on t'internent and am fairly sure they are teddybear crabs. Does anyone know of a good trap to catch the little buggers?

Sean

 

[@ombomb]

leaning a glass / pastic bottle against some rock with bait inside or a commercial trap are usually recommended

only managed to catch my nuisance crab by stipping the tank down though

 

[seanyt66]

I borrowed a trap from my dad and baited it last night but caught nothing - i guess i was expecting too much to catch one of em first time out!

Sean