Emerald Crabs...Reef safe?? Maybe Not

[NewGuy168]

Hey fellow reefers i have just bought 2 of the worst emerald crabs a reefer can ever experience. i just finished acclimating it and once i threw it into the tank. The 2 damn things went straight at my Zoos. I was sooo shocked. I thought these guys were suppose to be reef safe. But i guess i found out the hard way when i saw them munching on my pink zoo. So right away i told my gf to rush to the kitchen to get me a container and i yanked those suckers out. Unfortunately the bad thing that happened was while i was yanking them out i pulled off one of its legs.....i feel so bad, but i had no choice. well after an hour of trying to lure them out and yank them out i finally got them both out with one broken leg on each... Nowthey are sitting in my sump waiting to be taken back to my LFS. Luckily i know the guy there pretty good and he is willing to take them back. Well i just wanted to know if anyone has had any of the same experiences or had one of the bad batch of non-reef safe emerald crabs.

 

[CruzinKim]

The small size, 2/3 the size of a dime are pretty safe. The larger ones, sometimes are not.

 

[rkelman]

Each animal is an individual. They may have been starved up until the point you got them to your tank don't forget... You may want to feed them then try again. Crabs in general are opportunistic feeders anyways and the "Reef safe" label should be taken with a grain of salt....

 

[cuddle fish]

I have had two emerald crabs (a little bigger than nickel-sized) for a few months with no problems. I bought them when I started getting bubble algae. I have zoos and they don't bother them or anything else. They sometimes eat bubble algae and are always busy cleaning rocks. So far, so good. I hope that doesn't change when they get bigger.

 

[blaze98]

my emeralds have never looked at any of my corals and they do a great job on my hair algae.

 

[NewGuy168]

OK. Thanks everyone here for the feedback. But i doubt i wanna try again and risk to lose some corals. I just took them out today and put it into my fish only tank. They are doing pretty good so far. But it seems like my emperor angel and my morish idle wants to pick at them. But they should be ok.

 

[jimramey]

I had 4 small emaralds in a 125 Gal for about 3 months when I noticed one of them had doubled in size and had became a little agressive. I trapped him and put him in a 20 gal tall with 8 Damsils. After a couple of weeks the Damsils began dying off, I first thought is was bad water until my wife caught the crab with a 3 strip Damsil in is claws having lunch. Watch when they get larger.

 

[ringfinger]

I kept an medium sized emerald in a NC24 for several months without a problem. There was also a bounty of algae to keep him happy though. If they run out of food, expect them to move onto other sources.