Crab ID

[liquidland]

I was watching my red crab wander about aimlessly and all of a sudden my other, larger crab decided to swoop in and pull him under a rock. The terror of my red crab was apparant. I freed him from the jaws of death and am now reconsidering my larger crab.

I'm not even sure exactly what he is. I'm was thinking he is of the Calappa genus. Can anyone ID it for me and/or give me some more information about it?

 

[LeslieH]

That shot doesn't give much id info but it doesn't look much like a Calappa. Would you take 2 more, one looking straight down showing the back & one from the front?

 

[liquidland]

Here's a couple more images

 

[LeslieH]

He is a cute little guy. Appears to be a stone crab, family Xanthidae, but not one I know. There are 100s of species in the family and many of them are small so they're pretty hard to identify especially without knowing what part of the world they came from. All of these seem to be opportunistic predators and scavengers, and they will happily eat each other.

 

[liquidland]

I asked where I got him from and they thought it might be a spider crab , but it doesn't look like a spider crab to me. At least not any I've seen before

 

[LeslieH]

It would be nice if more of the people working at lfs were more knowledgeable about the animals they sell. This is definitely not a spider crab (family Majidae) and definitely a xanthoid. In a way it doesn't matter because most of these have the same sort of eating habits.

 

[sandshifter532]

Looks like a gorilla crab to me

 

[liquidland]

This pic shows off its pincers and underside:

And here's a better overhead:

Its carapace is about 2" wide and 1" deep.

 

[LionfishFinatic]

I agree with sandshifter, looks like a gorilla crab to me especially with the last pics with the black claws.