Need crab ID

[exodus454]

Found this guy one night in the 75g reef. Never seen anything like it, he's white with maroon stripes and his body is probably about 2-2.5".

I've only seen him twice, and these are the best shots I could catch of him. He only seems to be out at night, and he has created some burrows under the LR.

I've searched through other crab ID threads around the interweb and havn't come up with anything. IDeas??

 

[Guygettnby]

looks like some sort of stone crab. it is not reef safe though so put it in your sump or fuge. or you can give it to me for my hitch hiker tank

best way to know if it is reef safe or not is to look at the claws. normally if it has pointed claws they are not reef safe. but that is not always the case.

 

[exodus454]

I haven't gotten a good look at it's claws because it is so sensitive to light. As soon as any light hits it, back into the rock. They look fairly blunt. It seems to be making holes in the rock larger and larger.
I don't see any signs of it bothering anyone, except in the past few months almost all of my snails have been eaten. I don't believe they died on their own because there have been no spikes and no visible signs of stress on the corals. And the shells seem to be too clean to have slowly died. It looks as if their flesh was pulled out all at once, because the inside is white and clean. Yet my hermit crabs, peppermint shrimp, and emerald crab are unscathed. Makes me think Xanthidae crab, but haven't seen any pics with this color pattern.

 

[LeslieH]

It's a xanthid. There are hundreds of species with a wide variety of colors, textures, & shapes so it's not surprising you haven't seen a match. Contrary to reefer myth the shape of the claws doesn't mean that much except that the thicker they are the heavier the shells they can crack. Most xanthids, the hermits, and even peppermints & emeralds have been known to go after snails. Another possibility is that you have an oenonid polychaete or the type of flatworm that eat molluscs.