Crab eating blue tip acro

[ecoman001]

I found a small crab eating my blue tip acro yesterday. It's brown with black hairs and really small. This morning it had finished off one whole stalk!!!! Help!!! I can't remove the acro from my tank. It's cemented to the rock. It's a pretty good sized colony, about 7 inches in diameter.

Any suggestions.

 

[texman]

I have had the same problem in the past with those hairy crabs. I have a few times, been able to use fine tweezers to grab the little bugger from beween the branches and get him out, but they are very fast - you will need to get a good grip on the first attempt since they will immediately try to hide deep in the coral once they sense an attempt at their life. Most of the time, you will need to remove the coral (or frag the piece that it is on) to get it out. It will eventually kill the entire coral and then move on to another one if you don't get rid of it!

 

[ecoman001]

Thanks Texman.

I knew it was bad. There is a hole it goes down when I go after it with tweezers. I found a second one on another SPS (no tissue gone that I see) and was able to stab it with tweezers.

I really didn't want to frag up this piece yet. It's one of my biggest colonies right now. Lots of stalks for the crab to run through. Oh well. I'll keep trying.

 

[monkeyboy]

I had a small crab, looked no different than any acro crab i've seen, eat hundreds of polyps off a new pink seriatopora. It was in the colony when i got it, and was probably munching on it then. After repeaded attempts to get the thing out, i just shoved a metal rod down in and crushed the little bugger. Kind of a bummer for the crab, but a bigger bummer for the coral if he didn't stop.

If you cant get the coral out, go for the crush. If you can get the coral out, they usually fall off during an iodine dip, so you could try that. HTH

 

[Mouse]

Yea, some of those crabs will actually fight back. Not that its any bother cuz their so teeeny, stupid little crustacien. :wink: