Check these pics.. Yesterday I found a female emerald up at the top of my green slimer 1 inch off the water surface.. She stayed there overnight and is still there... She literally had to climb a foot up the stick to get to where she is now... I don't see her eating damaging or eating the coral however a couple weeks ago I removed 2 monster male emeralds and 1 female for what I deemed as "conduct detrimental to my zoas".. Once my tank was BA free it seems like they found a new food source which sucks because I lost a lot of nice colonies (blue rhino, magician, pink lemonade, purple hornet, rasta, alfa omega)
Friend or Foe - EMERALD CRAB
- Thread starter kirkwood
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Mine like to mess with my Zoa's as well. He also wore my riccoridea as a hat which got lost in my tank because of him. Recently I found him belly up, not sure why. Everything is good and stable maybe lack of algae or food... maybe just old who knows but I don't think I will be getting a new one.
Thanks for the comments. I hate to get rid of them because I constantly see them picking at rockwork, but I can't risk any more damage to coral. I am trying my best to run an ULN system so I just don't see a food supply for them and I'm not going to feed them either. They've gotta go.
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The females are far less likely to do anything. I have seen a male scrape at some blastos and acans of mine. Was just scraping away as I was looking in horror lol....
Like what was said, the female emeralds stay smaller than the males and are less problematic. I think the males will kill small fish when they sleep at night.
I watched a large male lurk under a rock, then every few seconds he would dart out and snip a couple tentacle tips off my hammer coral. He didn't eat them, just gave the coral a haircut. He was out of the tank after that.
I watched a large male lurk under a rock, then every few seconds he would dart out and snip a couple tentacle tips off my hammer coral. He didn't eat them, just gave the coral a haircut. He was out of the tank after that.
When I originally read this thread I thought "friend". My emerald crab is awesome. I got it from Jenn at the expo. He loves bubble algae. He was tiny when I got him.
I have one now, that looks like it may be a different species. It's greener than my good one and has hairy looking legs. It hitchiked in on my clam, which is funny, because the store owner saw one, asked if I wanted it, and pulled it back out and put it back in his system. There was another! (Big clam)
Today I witnessed him take his little claw, rip a piece of my toadstool and eat it. I've been wondering why it looks like crap.
Wonder what else he's snacking on? I tried to get a video, but he took off.
I have one now, that looks like it may be a different species. It's greener than my good one and has hairy looking legs. It hitchiked in on my clam, which is funny, because the store owner saw one, asked if I wanted it, and pulled it back out and put it back in his system. There was another! (Big clam)
Today I witnessed him take his little claw, rip a piece of my toadstool and eat it. I've been wondering why it looks like crap.
Wonder what else he's snacking on? I tried to get a video, but he took off.
In my experience having 3 in about 4 months, they're always hungry, if I was feeding my zoas or the Duncan colony that I had they would love to jump on top of the coral and remove the food from the mouth, no means for me to feed a guy that it was supposed, intently, to put there to eat leftovers and such, after a while I noticed I only had two and I believe they're extremely territorial as I saw them fighting more than once, and I think the missing one lost a fight LOL!
