Emerald crab question

[650-IS350]

During my current 7days of Darkness in my tank to rid of Dinoflagelletes. When I turned on my attinics for 15mins while feeding the fish... I noticed 1 of my emeralds litteraly picking at the polyps on 1 of my frags of green digitata... you guys/gals ever experienced this.



thanks
Charles-

 

[Kinetic]

my emerald crab ate two gobies, destroyed one of my acropora colonies, ate two colonies of armageddon zoos and one armor of god zoo colony. Then he went on and ate all my xenia, tore the flesh off of my open brain, ate all my GSP (which i guess is a good thing), ate some people eaters, and ate all the tissue off of one of my montipora caps.

emeralds are NOT reefsafe. that said, I now have one emerald that lives on the bottom of my frag tank. It cleans the bare rocks and glass, but unless it learns to swim really really well, it'll never get to my coral =) and... i don't have anymore gobies, so yeah =)

be careful with those guys =X

 

[650-IS350]

I was thinking of getting them out too and putting them in my HOB fuge...

 

[sfsuphysics]

I've never had issues with emeralds, I do see them picking near corals occasionally however I attribute this to the algae that might be growing there.

 

[Skorpinok]

Art you're too kind... I had 1 once and witnessed it eating my AOG frag that I got from the last BAR swap. I caught it and gave it to my friend who had a mid size niger trigger. Yum, Yum....

 

[650-IS350]

ahhahhah.. nice expensive meal... hows the 6line doing for you now... He was FAT as a blimp till I put him on a diet...

 

[jellygeee]

Probably they are hungry? According to Liveaquaria, they are an opportunistic feeder, so I guess when the light goes off, there's the opportunity for them to scavenge =p

http://www.liveaquaria.com/product/prod_display.cfm?pcatid=628&N=0

 

[Kinetic]

to keep mine off of my corals, I was feed the hikari algae discs, twice a day to this thing... it was monstrous.

 

[TimTen]

I was so upset mine made it through my red bug treatment. So far its only eaten some of my purple digi, that I know of.

 

[Sparkss]

Mythrax are barely a step above hitchiker gorrilla crabs IMHO. We have had them eat/destroy everything from fish to corals and will not have any such crabs in our tank. crabs == evil

 

[funman1]

I have 5 Emeralds in my 30 and 2 in each of my nanos.
I have never noticed them doing anything bad.
I also feed them with my baster if they are visible during feeding times.

But as with anything in our tanks, your mileage may vary.

 

[Skorpinok]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=10098443#post10098443 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by delsol650
ahhahhah.. nice expensive meal... hows the 6line doing for you now... He was FAT as a blimp till I put him on a diet...

Well, I figure I got him from one of the group buys. So I think I got him for $8. LFS sells AOG for about, what, $10 - $15 a polyp and there were at least 15 to 20. Plus he also ate half of my pick bubble gum zoo's... YEAH, I call that equal justice.

YES - your 6line is, so far, a model citizen and fat. I don't think he' going to muck around in my tank. Especially when a purple tang, the size of a softball (got him from Alex - reeferonabudget - I think that's his RC handle). And a blue tang, almost the size of a softball, is swimming around. He behaves himself.

 

[Kinetic]

oh by the way, the male and female versions of emeralds are very different. The males are HUGE and will eat fish, while the females are smaller and tend to be ok in a reef.

I definitely had a male in my last tank, and from that one group buy we had that nicholas had put together like a year or two ago. I currently have a female which can't swim and get up to my frag racks =)

 

[maxdout]

my emerald took advantage of all my fishes and had them for dinner. be wary of them

 

[sfsuphysics]

Another thing to consider, is that not all green crabs that LFS sell as "Emeralds" might not be the same species. In the same way not all crabs with hairy legs are evil "Gorilla crabs"

 

[tuberider]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=10102575#post10102575 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by sfsuphysics
Another thing to consider, is that not all green crabs that LFS sell as "Emeralds" might not be the same species. In the same way not all crabs with hairy legs are evil "Gorilla crabs"

That's also my understanding as well. Also, I must be a lucky SOB, I have them in at least 6 tanks as we speak without issues, as well as Karl whose been with me for I don't even know how long (years) in my own personal tank, no problems.

 

[tonggao]

I have 6 to 8 emeralds in my 120G tank, and 1 in my 12G nano, and so far no problem (knock on the wood). A couple of them love to nest in my millie/digitata colonies, which made me really nervous, but I did not see any bite marks on the corals. Oh, I did have one incident, when I put in one of newly bought emerald, it was dropped right on top of my tubs blue. It immediately took out a few polyps of the tubs blue. My guess is it was disoriented and starving from the fish store.

 

[650-IS350]

I think you got enough tubs there tong to not feel any pain in losing a couple of polyps..:lol:

 

[Kinetic]

omg, drop me on your colony of tubs!

 

[tonggao]

Charles, you are right, the emerald are just helping me controlling the tubs weeds. Art, I am sure you will do a lot more damage if dropped on my tubs.