Stone Crab

snulma1

New member
I purchased the package from TBS this past Jan and have spent a decent amount of time catching the gorilla crabs.
Then I saw what I thought was a cool crab, not hairy, purple, and tiny at the time. Figured he wasn't a gorilla but unsure of what he was, so I left him.

Lost track of him for a couple of months, started to notice some digging underneath my rocks and thought it was due to my pistol.

Well yesterday I saw his molt...He got bigggggg. What once was half the size of my pinky nail, now has a body bigger than the width of my thumb. I pulled the molt and looked at it, he's got black tips on the end of his claws, so I think this is a purple stone crab, who looks similar to this:
http://www.huntstats.com/images/Crab3.jpg

Does anyone have any experience with these? Do I have to tear my tank down and catch him, will he decimate my CUC or will he be peaceful?

Thanks
 
The stone crab when a baby is purple ish, then once over an inch between points on shell turns tan with spots on it at first and then the spots fade on some.

juv-stone-crabs.jpg.gif


small-stone-crab.jpg1.gif
 
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My purple guy is now huge hanging out in the sump, grow from about an 1" to about 4" in two months. Pretty cool. He's still purple.
 
This guy came from the other side of the world.
 

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