What is this critter?

L

LarryS

New member
Hi All:

Got my TBS Live Rock about a week ago. I'm now getting a glimpse of this new critter haven't seen before. He is hiding behind the rock, so I'm not sure, but it sort of looks like a crab, there are claws, brownish red in color, but the main thing is two appendages it uses to swish things into its mouth, they are "fan" like, at least it appears that way to me from what I can tell. It sweeps these 2 thin fan like ends of these appendages into its mouth. Is this enough for someone to identify it for me? And, is it good in the tank or should it be removed. I have a 45 gal to become a reef tank.
Any comments appreciated.
 
its a Mantis Shrimp :) You should remove it if you can and post it here for someone to take. many people will take it of your hands :) Pretty cool critter though so you might even consider making a species tank fro it. Do a search on Mantis shrimp and youll find tons of info :)
Chris
 
Yes there will be lots of porcelin crabs of all sizes. They are really cool!

I had porcelins (about six or seven), pistol shrimp, at least two mantis (oh what fun!), three red mithrax (sp), about a bazillion hairy crabs (gorillias) and some really smalll blue leg hermits hitch in on my TBS.

The mantis are bad, bad , BAD!!!!

The gorillias seam OK when small, I can see them being bad when larger and many posts here support that. So I've been pulling out the larger ones as they make themselves available.

IMHO, Mithrax need to be judged as individuals one was bad and one was eaten by a mantis the other is OK but growing like crazy they eat tons of algea... hair, red, brown, macro... whatever. When he picks at a coral I just poke him with something and he runs away.

But the mantis... so far the two I had (down to one... hehe) have eaten over half a dozen 3/4" plus hermits, countless crabs, oysters, barnacles, a pepermint shrimp, etc... the list goes on and on. When you find yours... and you will ... get rid of it! ASAP!!!

Just my experience so far.

Good luck!
 
OK then. I think the consensus is its a Porcelain crab. Strangely, I have not laid my eyes on a Mantis Shrimp yet. And nothing has been eaten in the 10 days I've had my TBS Rock. I do hear clicking noises occasionally from a source I haven't yet seen, but I've been told thats likely a pistol shrimp. I've spotted some very small grey hairy gorilla crabs, but they are so wary, I can't even breathe and they crawl back deep into their little holes in the rock!

Thanks for eveyone's comments.
 
I had a good sized gorilla crab and withen days it started to eat a lot of stuff so out he went. then I noticed a small gorilla crab about 4 weeks later and figured no big deal, he isnt as big as the first one. well, I watched him drag a limpet into his cave, then a small turbo snail, then my curly que disappeared and that little sob molted and was much larger than when I saw him at first so lesson being, the small ones get busy hunting and growing fast so get them out at all costs.
 
I'll start colecting small hairy crabs this weekend. I saw a little one tugging on a 3/4" limpet today. I couldn't believe it!
They're gone!
 
Thanks! Still have the keyhole, but the hairy crab eventually became mantis food after he was banished to the "prison sump". I still have a bunch of little hairy crabs in the tank (they are too small to do anyone any harm), and one big one in "prison" (that the mantis haven't done in yet).
 
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