Anemone Crab Pairing

[ThRoewer]

The time they kill each other is during molt, not normal every day.

I feel that the female should be larger than the male. Also the two pairs I have now are of the dense regular ordered small spot variety. So far I had not been successful with pairing the ones of the large irregular spot variety. Mixing the different pattern type individuals didn't work well either. So there might be a difference between those two general types after all.
The ones of the first pair have already molded at least once.
The second I bought at the same time but put each in a different anemone in the tank with my bicinctus. A day later they were both in the purple haddoni.

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[ThRoewer]

AC had another male and female of the dense spot variety, large ones this time. So I decided to try these in my haddoni tank where they have 4 Darwin clownfish to deal with. I hope that this will help them bond.

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[ThRoewer]

When I checked today the new pair was sitting side by side.

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[ThRoewer]

... The thing is they don't have these for sale here in Corpus. When ever I am out of town, I will try to get several.

I'm kinda out of empty anemones for these guys so if you want, next time I see a potential pair at AC I can let you know. I think that by now I got pretty good at sexing these guys as long as they are not too small. With adults like my last pair the differences are pretty clear.


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[OrionN]

Shipping from Ca to me is about 70.00. Hard to justify for a pair of crabs. A nice Gigantea, Magnifica or a pair of WC Percula. That is different.
I see if the Petco manager order me some.

 

[ThRoewer]

Shipping from Ca to me is about 70.00. Hard to justify for a pair of crabs. A nice Gigantea, Magnifica or a pair of WC Percula. That is different.
I see if the Petco manager order me some.

Maybe you can combine them with an anemone and percula.
AC had several magnificas yesterday, unfortunately all bleached. And it seems that they get percula more regularly now.

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[OrionN]

I got too many. I only consider very nice Magnifica now. MO Gigantea have to be very nice too. I always get local Petco Gigantea if they are available and not too far gone. I am sure I can get the manager to order me some crabs.
I know you have problem with bleached Magnifica now, but for me, with as many Magnifica as I have, bleached one is no problem. I did Zoo transplant before and have no problem when donor is of the same species.

 

[ThRoewer]

These two seem to get along especially well, always sitting near each other.

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[ThRoewer]

I got too many. I only consider very nice Magnifica now. MO Gigantea have to be very nice too. I always get local Petco Gigantea if they are available and not too far gone. I am sure I can get the manager to order me some crabs.
I know you have problem with bleached Magnifica now, but for me, with as many Magnifica as I have, bleached one is no problem. I did Zoo transplant before and have no problem when donor is of the same species.

For some reason, AC only gets bleached magnificas recently. Otherwise, they seem to be healthy.
I have one bleached gigantea I got from LA on which I will try the zooxanthellae transplant since I have 3 healthy gigs that can function as donors.
I need to see what I can do with my mag. Maybe I need to separate it from the bicinctus. It's not that they stress the anemone too much, but they always steal its food. As a result, it has shrunk quite a bit by now. Once it can eat in peace I may try to feed it a cocktail of tentacles from all my anemones and soft corals. I would think one should have compatible zooxanthellae. Otherwise, I need to see where I can get a magnifica that isn't bleached.

 

[OrionN]

I got a Crab pair at Petco today. Taken pictures of the two of them together we can clearly see the different between male and female. In this case the female is with eggs also.
Here is a picture of the pair. Female with larger modified tail that cover the underside.

 

[ThRoewer]

Picked up another two this Labor Day weekend:

Male is the smaller one on the left, Female the larger on the right.

And the store had also gotten a few Stenopus shrimp in from which I managed to pick 2 pairs:

Stenopus tenuirostris:

Stenopus zanzibaricus:

 

[OrionN]

My pair did not fare well. The female just disappeared when she molted, I think eaten by the male. No more trying to pair crabs for me. This was my experience in the past also.

 

[ThRoewer]

My pair did not fare well. The female just disappeared when she molted, I think eaten by the male. No more trying to pair crabs for me. This was my experience in the past also.

My 3 previous pairs are still together. The males of 2 of the pairs sometimes go on an excursion, exploring their tanks, but after a day or two they return to the females.
I put the new pair with a couple of new BTAs and at first they squabbled a little but after two days they were in the same anemone.

The difference between yours and mine is that my crabs are all of the dense fine spot variety while yours are of the scattered large spot kind. My experience with those is so far, like yours, that they break up after a short while, even those bought as harvested pairs.
Another factor might be that I keep all of my pairs (with the exception of the last so far) in haddoni carpet anemones. Generally it seems that these crabs strongly favor Stichodactyla species over all other host anemones.

 

[ThRoewer]

The pairs that are together the longest. One occupies two neighboring haddoni but they don't fight or kill each other.
The tank with the third pair is right now too dirty to take a picture where you can actually see something, but those two are also still together and share the same haddoni.

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[OrionN]

I got mine in my green Haddoni too.

 

[ThRoewer]

I got mine in my green Haddoni too.

Are you sure that your female is dead and not just hiding somewhere? In my experience, in a large enough tank they don't kill each other but rather just chase the other away from the anemone. If there is a fight they may lose a claw or leg, but that's usually the point where the weaker individual retreats.
Fights with anemonefish, however, might result more severe injury.
Of course, once they are out of the anemone it is only a matter of time for them to perish or falling prey to a predator.

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[ThRoewer]

Update:
My 3 older pairs yesterday...

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[ThRoewer]

Update:

Update:

All 4 of my anemone crab pairs are still together.

This is the pair that's with the milii, sitting at the base of the anemone:

 

[OrionN]

I have three singleton's All in separate tanks. they started out as pair but the first one that molt loose. I will look for fine spots anemone crabs in the future and avoid these larger spots.

 

[ThRoewer]

Also, make sure that there is no fish in the tank that eats crabs. I've seen them venture away from the anemone in the beginning.
Also, not sure if it's of any significance, but I have all my pairs in 40 gallon tanks, no larger and not smaller.

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