possible big problem

[fierceseaman]

I just got a couple of candy cane corals in my tank from liveaquaria.com the corals themselves are fine and came through shipping well. they are placed on the sandbed for now as I'm getting them used to the lights.

this morning i woke up to find that one of the corals had a dead hermit crab in its mouth! it looks like it has about 80-90% of the hermit crab engulfed already! i'm not sure it is going to be able to eat the rest of it and i'm worried that this will kill the coral. what should i do? should i try to pull the crab out of its mouth? should i just let it be and hope for the best? thanks guys.

 

[DetectiveTofu]

I don't have any personal experience with this, so this is my logic speaking I would be careful about pulling it out because a crab does have a shell, and pulling it out has the potential to tear the oral tissue. IMO I would just let it be and see what happens. Aside, even if one head/polyp dies, I don't think it is the end of the world - granted none of us like to lose corals. Just my .02

 

[fierceseaman]

yeah actually the hermit had been pulled out of his shell. and the coral ate the crab what would have been the shell side first, now the legs of the dead hermit crab are sticking out of the polyps mouth!

 

[zotzer]

did you get any pics???
Tracy

 

[fierceseaman]

<a href="http://photobucket.com" target="_blank"><img src="http://i236.photobucket.com/albums/ff253/fierceseaman/hermit.jpg" border="0" alt="Photo Sharing and Video Hosting at Photobucket"></a>

 

[650-IS350]

could have been a moulting crab

 

[nmprisons]

this is fine. i wouldn't worry at all. probably just a good meal for the coral. I wouldn't worry about it.

 

[fierceseaman]

thanks for the help guys, the coral ended up spitting it back out after it ate a little bit off the end of it.

 

[Hypertek99]

yep most likely a molt hermit crap shell. I get it all the time and the corals catch it and eats it up and if they don't like it they will spit it back out.