Sneaky Little Critter

[tahojones]

I "had" a lovely hairy mushroom coral but it started to dwindle away. All the other corals were doing well and the water quality was great. I was at a loss, until i noticed a small strange looking creature under the rock my coral was on. It took me an hour or so to "capture" it, but I just knew I had found my coral's problem. I called Aquatic Critter and told Michael this thing looked like some kind of flaky bug.... He laughed and and revealed the name of my "decorator crab". He was using my coral. the little bugger is no longer with us. Hope my coral grows back :crazy1:

Linda J

 

[ZachB]

I used to have a decorator crab. He was one of the coolest critters I had in my tank. He would crawl to the top of the rock pile and then "jump off" and cruise to the bottom, and then do it again. Sometimes he would float for a while in the current. Always fun to watch would love to have another, mine unfortunately got stuck on my closed loop intake on my 75 when I had it, and died. Mine never really hid much, which was surprising.

 

[SushiGirl]

Zach, that's a trip, mine did the same thing!!!! It always took him a while to get the guts to jump, but as soon as he hit bottom he ran right back to the highest point. He was a freebie with an order, and I knew nothing about them when I got him.

 

[ZachB]

Zach, that's a trip, mine did the same thing!!!! It always took him a while to get the guts to jump, but as soon as he hit bottom he ran right back to the highest point. He was a freebie with an order, and I knew nothing about them when I got him.

lol ... that's awesome. You could just tell he was having a good time.

I actually bought mine, he would take clippings of zoas and xenia and would kind of poke at my LPS from time to time, but never caused much damage. I knew what I was putting in my tank and never regretted it :crazy1:

 

[SushiGirl]

Oh, I never regretted mine either. When I lost my entire tank, I bought another one, but she was burgundy instead of orange & wasn't as fun as he was! He was that bright orange color, and he wore my orange zoas exclusively. The first time he molted, I had to keep pushing his old molt on him, cuz he wanted to go cut a new crop of zoas LOL.