is this a good crab!? please ID!!!!

True Blue

True Blue

Member
HI! i just got some live rock from a friend and i found this little guy in the rock, i got him out and he is in a Styrofoam cup in my tank, awaiting his destiny.. i don't know if he's a good crab or not and i have a lot of corals he could eat. I could give him to a friend if he is bad. i just want to know what to do with him, and what he eats, if he is a coral eating crab. thanks any help is appreciated!
sry this is a blurry picture i don't have a good camera, but i can tell you he has a bigger right claw, hairy legs that are white and brown striped, two white splotches on each of his head, and black pointed tips of his claws. he is also striped under neath. if anyone can tell me anything about it, it would be awesome! he's a pretty cool lookin crab!


http://i3.photobucket.com/albums/y94/lunachick_5271/Picture253.jpg
http://i3.photobucket.com/albums/y94/lunachick_5271/Picture252.jpg
http://i3.photobucket.com/albums/y94/lunachick_5271/Picture255.jpg
 
usualy if the tips come to a point it is a bad crab. if the tips of the claws are cuped that means they are algea eaters and usualy good crabs. kinda hard to really id the crab from those pictures so thats the best i could tell ya.
 
Does your camera have a "macro" function? It looks like a little flower, usually a button or a setting. You could try taking pictures on that setting.

I found a really pretty bad crab once, it's red and white. I felt bad killing it, so instead, I made a home for it out of a water bottle. I drilled holes all through the bottle and drilled an air line sized hole in the lid and put the out-line of my aqualifter pump through the lid so water is constantly pumping through. I feed him with a syringe through the lid hole. He's been in there a long time.
 
still cant see the claws that well. all i can say is if your in doubt then throw it out. or atleast in your sump if you got one.
 
His crabs doesn't not appears to be porcelain crab. IMHO, crabs = out of my tank. Even algae eater, spoon-like tip of the pincher instead of pointed, will eat snails, especially my Stomatella species snails.
 
Not a porcelain. You can see in image 259 that the crab in question has four pairs of walking legs, whereas the porcelain crabs only have three (as can be seen in the photo livingcorals linked to.) A shame, as porcelains are great crabs.

But other than telling you that it isn't a porcelain (and a few other things it isn't, such as a hermit, arrow, or spider crab), I can't tell you what it is. I suppose it could be a Mithrax spp. (as it is a large genus of crabs that often is found as a hitchhiker.)
 
wow! all your help is very appreciated! :)
yeah, its not a porcelain crab! maybe i will throw it in my sump for now... i cannot even find a place online where i can id this thing, and it doesn't seem to look like anything i've viewed so far! any new information will be helpful! :)
 
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