Crab and Sps Question?

[pnavarro170]

Yeah your right Deehz, thats why id be more concerned if it was just discoloration, not clean little cuts off the tips tough. im gonna try and take out things with legs and claws, well the big ones. see what that does, if not the little ones are next to go. they cleaned the rock really well, but ive read that they will even eat coraline algae, so if they dont have enough food, the sps was their next choice. updates will come, ideas still welcome of course.

 

[pnavarro170]

k caught the big one in the act finally. haha. was able to get ahold of his body, he didnt want to leave so he was willing to lose a leg over it. i won though, one more small one to catch, he was right on top of a bigger sps colony having at it. and the big one did a bit of damage to a nice and perfect closed brain coral of mine. What the Heck (other word really in mind)

 

[psuedopimp]

sounds like you got a real band of thugs. hopefully you can take them back to where ever you got them.

oh that purple frag is awesome.

 

[pnavarro170]

probably should find out the name of the frag, everyone seems to like it, even though its suppose to have blue tips. i guess ill post pics of my frags soon. need a better camera still.

 

[pnavarro170]

k sps frags looking like they are recovering, crabs going back to the store even though one small emerald is still in there.

 

[stanger50lx92]

I had a cleaner shrimp in my 39g cadlights tank. HAD! till I saw him ripping my hammer coral apart. That hammer coral would not extend for days. One day got home from work and saw little green things floating in the tank. So I just stayed back and watched for an hour, sure enough the "reef safe" cleaner shrimp went down to the hammer coral and just started ripping at it. Not even putting one speck of it in his mouth parts to eat it, just ripping at it. I had to take everything out of the tank just to get him out and back to where I bought him. After I got that shrimp out my hammer coral has grown and is extended beautifully!
Just my 2 cents on "reef safe" things.

 

[pnavarro170]

ive now heard pure sps tanks shouldnt have things with legs and claws. haha. any truth to this ??? so far all i have in there are sps frags, 2 closed brains, 1 large lobo brain, and 2 frags of GSPs. oh and a few heads of ausie blasto's that may or may not stay in there. next step is to add a nice frag pack of sps.

 

[MedRed]

I caught my emerald in the act of munching on my goinopora. He'd wait until night fall every night and then climb onto the close goinopora and dig his claws in. I know it's not an SPS, but "reef safe" isn't a catch all term. I no longer allow crabs in my tank unless it's a porcelain,anemone, or pom pom.

 

[deehz]

"reef safe" is a very subjective term. There are clowns that can kill everything in a tank that are supposed to be "reef safe". There are tangs that are "supposed to be reef safe" and they will turn on just about anything. Coral banded shrimp are supposed to be "not reef safe" but some are just as peaceful as can be.

It all just a crap shoot. That's why I try to "train" everything to eat prepared foods--fish, shrimp, crabs, corals, etc. The faster you get them acclimated to eaten prepared foods, the less "likely" they will munch on the stuff that can't get away.

So I don't believe in the school that "pure sps tanks shouldn't have things with legs and claws." I have heard this as well. But you have to remember that these are "reefers" that caught one hermit crab munch on a favorite SPS frag and off with their head. They then get a bad rap because of this one incident. You know the saying that someone or something can do 99 out 100 right. Yet the 1 time they get it wrong, its magnified 100 times. That's how this hobby is. Heck, we know more about Jupiter then we do our own oceans. That should tell you everything.

 

[deehz]

Hey Pedro--if you are looking for a frag laconic sps, Garf.org is having a sale on 10 sps frags for 100 bills. plus they usually will give you a couple of frags of something just for shopping with them. I like Garf cause they are one of very, very few vendors that do promote proper reef husbandry. They only sell frags of their own mother colonies.

 

[pnavarro170]

thanks deehz, but it says 8 for $100, and i have no idea of what they are sending me. is there a different link ???

 

[deehz]

No. That is it. Maybe I read it wrong. Their web page is not the easiest to navigate. You can call them and ask them what they are sending you.

Also, what I forgot to mention is that TheCoralReef can order you some very nice sps from ORA. You can pick the ones you want and they will order them for you. This way you know what you are getting. Either way, you are going to get some very nice, quality frags either from Garf or ORA.