I cant figure out what kind of crabs i have. help?

TOURKID

TOURKID

New member
I cant get a picture of them, I can barely get a glimse of them.

Theyre are 2 hitchhiker crabs in my tank. One the size of a silver dollar, one the size of a nickle. They are extreamly shy, and each live in a separate cave

They have striped legs.
the small one I get to see sometimes.. It has brown and white stripes on its face going top to bottom

They are hairy

orange claws

rounded body (not flat, but kinda like an upside down bowl)

I have never caught them doing anything 'bad' I do try to get a piece of mysis in the caves every few days (whitch they greedily grab them run to hide agian)

theyre legs are thin and I think there are 3 on each side but there might be four. I looked at websites trying to identify them, and no such luck. the CLOSEST they come to looking like is the 'swimmer crab' but they definately dont swim. They hitchhiked on a fuji rock. One rock, but one moved to a diff rock when it became to big for the smaller cave
 
I think I have a similar crab that hitchiked on my live rock. The closest thing I've been able to find is a gorilla crab, the tampa bay saltwater site has a pic of it, but mine has yet to travel far enough out of his cave to get a good look. I think they are in the same family as the pom pom/boxing crabs but I'm not totally sure
 
ive had mine for 4 1/2 months.. the little one is much less 'scared' than the big one... he'll come out of his cave and sit on the edge.. at feeding time. got another look at him today, he has 4 legs each side plus the pinchers in front.

ill take a look at tampa bay saltwater site. i know my fish store carrys carribian rock, but i dont have any, and they keep that and fuji rock in separate tanks.....
 
more similer than anything else ive seen... but the claws are orange and theyre s stripes on his face this is sttrange i cant id these guys
 
lmao actually no :D im going to have to get a picture of one of these!!! Ill set the camera to super macro and try my best tomorrow. stick a piece of shrimp right out side his cave, then maybe I can zoom before i post. When your looking at the crab face to face, the lines alturnate from brown to white and run top to bottom, between his eyes as well as the sides of his eyes

and his legs are striped brown n white, same width at top of leg to bottom of legs.. theyre slightly curved...I guess a pic is worth a thousand words. Ill try tomorrow :)
 
You can try lifting the rock they're in out of the tank and setting it into a bucket of saltwater for a bit. That's one way to catch them if you must: that might at least let you get a good camera shot of them until they can be identified.
 
unfortunatly both rocks are at the bottom of the rock pile. not really planning on removing them either. i know what they say, but not a thing has come up missing or dead *knocking on desk* so ill leave them be, until I find out what they are at least. i dont even have a quarentine tank right now, so id have no place to keep it, they are going to be really hard to catch
 
found this on wwmedia someoone else wondering what crab it is... no help there but heres a pic that closly resembles mine.. ill still try to take a pic tomorrow

mystery_crab_anthony_wwm_id.jpg
 
ok, i tried to get them out with food, but the distance from my camera is still so far... lets see what these look like here...

DSCF08412.jpg


DSCF08452.jpg


help me identify?
 
hm. i almost wonder if these are two diff. species. lil one is very orange, big one... not so orange lol and the big one does have black claws!! maybe the lil one doesent get those till its older.....
 
Xanthid species with black tipped claws have the coloration even when they're very small so it does sound like you have two different species. The one in your second picture is indeed a xanthid and a reef predator.
 
by reef preditor... it eats coarl n such?

i cant believe 2 diff speices came on the same rock. just my luck


so..... how DO you catch a crab? :D
 
yes, it is not reef safe... (corals, inverts, even fish may become prey.)

take a drinking glass, lean it against the rock at an angle, and place a piece of shrimp or fish in the bottom of the glass overnight. The crab will climb into the glass to get the food, but will not be able to climb out because of the smooth sides of the glass.
 
my crabs caves are at the floor of the tank, do you think it will climb up a rock in order to go down in the glass?

i just told my boyfriend that our crab can eat coarls if it feels like it

he said 'so we cant ever get any coarl then?'

!! i told him i was going to catch the crab and he acted like hed rather have a crab than a coarl lol looks like i have another issue *grins*
 
did u feed it? just courious. Im planning on removing them when i 'remodel' next week. I had a snail or two die, but i cant prove who did that, and thats the only damage done so far :)
 
Did i feed it directly no.The crab ate what food i placed in the tank.The crab was on the large side so it wanted more i guess.
 
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