Emeral crab

[andersoned14]

ARe these "reef safe"? The crab I have in with the corals seems to pick on a lot of the corals mostly around feeding time. It doesn't seem to be eating the corals just getting the left over food. Is this going to be a problem or is this normal for crabs and snails to pick around corals.

 

[Dana42078]

They are reef safe and he's prolly picking at stuff around the corals. Although he may steal food from other corals. Mine likes to steal mysis shrimp from my sun coral when i feed it.

 

[BL1]

They mostly eat algae, but as they get bigger they will start scavenging food that falls or from your corals when you feed them. The to that I had in my nano even started feasting on my snails, my tank still looks like a snail graveyard :grumble:

 

[Ulta]

My Emerald Crab is very careful and seems to touch my corals briefly then moves on past them...

 

[andersoned14]

My Emerald Crab is very careful and seems to touch my corals briefly then moves on past them...

mine not so much it will pick them up and move them out of the way.:grumble: The coral are only attached to small rocks right now.

 

[irensing]

I've always had emeralds in my tank with no problems except one time. I woke up to a tank full of little orange and purple things floating all over the place. It turned out he was plucking my ricordea apart one clawful at a time. He was a very large sized emerald. Much bigger than is usually seen in the trade.

 

[dcantucson]

I have found the smaller ones to be safe; however if there isn't enough algae on your rocks he might explore eating a little on your corals.

 

[andersoned14]

however if there isn't enough algae

There is a lot of hair algea growing on the left side of the tank because the sun light is now hitting there. Do they or are they suppose to eat hair algea? That is the reason I got it. It doesn't seem to want anything to do with that algea.

 

[irensing]

They'll eat it sometimes, but they haven't made a significant impact for me in the past. I had good luck with a yellow tang taking care of hair algae and a tank full of caulerpa that I let get out of control. Some turbos should help too. I would suggest pulling out as much as possible by hand, try to block the external light for now, make sure your phosphates are low and then try adding a fish, snails, etc. A foxface may take care of the hair algae as well, but you have to watch them with some corals. I'd try a tang first. Some blue legs might help too. Good luck!

 

[BL1]

Tangs did nothing to help me with the green hair algae that was over taking my tank. I did add a red "emerald" crab though and he cleared through the hair algae in a little over a week.

 

[andersoned14]

I have red and blue leg herrmit crabs in there now. 5 astrea snails and the emeral crab. I would like to put a fish in there to see if that would help but it is in a 29gal tank so unless I wanted the tang police after me I better not add any of those fish. Thanks for your help, I think if I notice the corals starting to suffer because of the crab it will have to answer to the puffer in the 90gal. So far they still open and look good, it just keeps moveing them so they are all on the sand for now. I am thinking about glueing them to bigger rocks to see if that will help.