Brittle star vs crab battle

[Photobug]

We just added a strawberry crab to our tank a few days ago. It is an emerald crab from Hawaii.

A few days later we see the bristle star and crab battling out. The star are puffed up and quickly wrapped up the crab. The crab gets out but did not go far, just out from under the rock. They were soon entangled again. They broke up and went separate ways. I have not seen either since but that is not unusual.

It was very cool to watch and if it was on National Geographic I would have been enthralled. But being one of them is a long term inhabitant of our tanks and the other being a new $27 addition, I would rather them get along. Any idea who might be the aggressor? What is the probable outcome?

 

[aquanooby]

sounds wild lol. I know how you feel I'm cycling so all I have is at this point is my cuc but i was still bummed to see a hermit take out one of my snails because he had a nice shell

 

[Andrew D]

My bet would be on the crab being the aggressor. I have (sorry, had) many large serpents and brittles in my 150, but they slowly got mauled by my crabs. I kept on seeing the stars with missing limbs hiding inside my plating monti and wasn't sure what was going on until I saw a large hitchiker crab attacking one once. This thing was very large, much larger than my emeralds, but it reinforced my opinion that all crabs are predators.