So I was adding some liverock to my tank I've had cooking/cycling on the porch ever since my tank crashed last year and just happened to turn on rock sideways and peeked down a tunnel in the rock and to my surprise I saw some brown hairy legs. My first thought was OH SH!! its one of these
Fighting the urge to throw the rock across the room I instead put it in an empty 10 gallon tank I happened to have nearby. Added some water and hit the tunnel with a mag 9.5 exhaust (overkill I know), and out of the other end of the tunnel came this very hairy little brown crab with some very beefy claws. I took the rock out and chased him around with the net for a bit before he just up and jumped into my hand.
Dropped the net and a quick crappy cell phone camera later here he is..
No clue what he is or eats or has been eating. Anyone know? He's mostly brown, alot of hair, has extremely sharp back needle points on his leg tips and claws that are wider then his body.
I didn't want to put him in the main tank without knowing what he is, and I couldn't bare to kill the little bugger so I plopped him down in the refugeium for now. Gotta give the little guy credit, he some how surived not only the tank crash, but sitting out on the driveway under the warm florida sun for a couple days, then 12ish weeks of rock cooking/cycling on my back porch in the dark in a 44 gal brute trash can.
Fighting the urge to throw the rock across the room I instead put it in an empty 10 gallon tank I happened to have nearby. Added some water and hit the tunnel with a mag 9.5 exhaust (overkill I know), and out of the other end of the tunnel came this very hairy little brown crab with some very beefy claws. I took the rock out and chased him around with the net for a bit before he just up and jumped into my hand.
Dropped the net and a quick crappy cell phone camera later here he is..
No clue what he is or eats or has been eating. Anyone know? He's mostly brown, alot of hair, has extremely sharp back needle points on his leg tips and claws that are wider then his body.
I didn't want to put him in the main tank without knowing what he is, and I couldn't bare to kill the little bugger so I plopped him down in the refugeium for now. Gotta give the little guy credit, he some how surived not only the tank crash, but sitting out on the driveway under the warm florida sun for a couple days, then 12ish weeks of rock cooking/cycling on my back porch in the dark in a 44 gal brute trash can.
Anyway (almost) every crab is indeed an opportunistic omnivore as AJSTITAN14 already mentioned. So even algae eaters like Mithraculus sculptus (the so often mentioned Emerald crab) are very fond of some carnal food.
