Emerald Crabs!!!!!!!!

[popothemailman]

about a year ago i bought this big reef package off of ebay for 20 bucks, it came with 8 emerald crabs(3 of them have the body the size of 50cent coins!!), 25 scarlet hermits, 100 blue legs, 10 snails, decorator crabs, and some sally light foots...

There have been dissapearences of small fish in my tank since( 2 little perc clowns). yesterday i went to the lfs and bought a very cool eel, i forgot the name of it, but it can fit snugly into a straw and is a little longer than one, its white with gray sprinkles on it, and burrow its body under the sand and pokes his head out waiting for food. about 3am this morning i went to look how the tank was doing to see the eel burrowed under the sand... WITH its head chopped off and 2 emeralds(the big ones) and some hermits eating it!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! that is the last straw im about to be a emerald exterminator. correct me if im wrong but the hermits wont attack it would they?, i just think they started joining in after it was dead.

please help, im about to go crab catching...what do you think i can trade those emeralds for at a lfs anyways?

[seaham358]

Where did you buy all that for $20 bucks... Thats the buy of the year..

I would say its the sally lightfoots... Mine was a mean nasty crab and went after fish all the time and actually caught a new bicolor blenny right after he was put in the tank.. I got him to let go, only to find the crab eating him about a week later.
Any way the eel just died from stress and they were doing their job?
Grass eel?? I remember seeing them 1 time at a LFS and they were cool.. They require a very DSB 5"++. Thats too bad..

[melosu58]

I`ve never had my sally get that bad but I would not doubt that they can get mean like that.

[melosu58]

Also please direct me to that sale. I want part of that

[popothemailman]

well the sally lightfoots died about a week ago when i moved my tank... the ph shot down 8O ... i caught the emerald crab red handed so i read up on them and found out they will eat fish when they are bigger and can over power. hopefully the lfs will give me a good trade in for them. btw other than the emerald and the sally's will hermit crabs attack?

As for the sale, I got it off some guy from the florida keys on ebay. he had several reef packages very similar to mine, it was so cheap because he would dive and get them himself(no middle man)... he even got me 4 dwarf seahorses for $10... forgot his name... just search on ebay thats where i get basically everything for my tank very cheap and is the same stuff they sell overpriced at the lfs store!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Dr.Nate]

Sorry to hijack this thread, but it's got me to thinking.....My beloved whitecheek tang came up lame yesterday....I'm mean really lame....back side torn off (can see blood), messed up tail fin and under fin. So after thinking about it, there's only two options 1) He got caught in my overflow and had a hard time getting out , which is unlikely because I have plastic netting covering the intake or 2) my emerald mithrax's....they're getting big!

Is this possible? And even if remotely so, how do I catch them?

[popothemailman]

ya it got to be the emeralds... the best way to catch them will be when lights are off, i notice they come out at nite, anything meety and they will go after it and there not that fast...

[TeenReefer]

An emerald i USE to have snached one of my green chromis and ate it before my eyes! I would suspect the emeralds. Better luck next time...

[runway1]

I have had nothing but angst with crabs. Emerald, Sally Lightfoots, you name it. When they get big, they want meat and corals.

Currently, I have two SL crabs I need to fish out. They ate my 2" Maxima clam. They were cleaning out the last bits as I awoke one morning. They eat my red legs, pick corals. I hate them, I hate them

[saltyc]

hermits will kill snails, if they get a chance-I have seen them more than once grab a cerith snail or nassarius & yank the snail out just so the crab can have a new house!
I'm not sure what killed my turbo that died-it fell on its back one weekend while we were away at the lake. Either my niger trigger caught it while it was trying to right itself, or else the hermits picked at it till it died...

[nsu7]

Geez, maybe I shouldn't have bought 7 more hermits this weekend. Certainly won't be getting anymore I reckon.