gorrilla crabs-why are they bad?

[sir_dudeguy]

why are gorrilla bad? I think i found one in my brothers 29 but it hasnt done anything really. Its been in there for around 2 months or so and i havent noticed anything missing or dead or anything. It is still small tho so would that be why? Do they kill when they get bigger or something? I couldnt get a pic of it just now, but i will keep trying to get one. It was a reddish pink color (kinda like skin color) and it was fuzzy/hairy/whatever you call it.

Any suggestions on how to catch it? I'm guessing the trap with the cut off water bottle top and turn it inside out might work...

[kiknchikn]

They're a problem when they get bigger I think. They're predator crabs that will eat fish, other crabs, anemones, etc. I haven't heard of any eating corals though.

Bottle trap will likely work decent enough.

[sir_dudeguy]

ok thanks ;) I'll be tryin to catch him whenever i see him now. He's not a problem right now, so i'm not gonna go tearing the tank apart tryin to find him. just whenever i see him again, that sucker is gone :)

[kiknchikn]

No problem. Nighttime is probably the best bet for seeing and catching him. If it were me I'd wait for him to crawl into a work and yank that rock out and squirt club soda into it until it crawls out of the trap isn't working.

[sir_dudeguy]

good idea. Thats actually how he got into this tank. I was transfering a baseball sized rock from my 55 to this 29 and i was carrying the rock over and while doing so the thing crawled on my hand and totally freaked me out and my bad luck it landed right in the tank and hid lol. At the time i didnt know it was a bad crab tho..so i probably would have put it in the tank anyways (tho it would not have been via fedex air delivery! lol )

[kiknchikn]

You probably shouldnt add any crab to your tank unless you know what kind it is. Some (probably the vast majority) are not reef safe and they're always a pain to get back out.

My coworker and I both have reef tanks in our cubes and we have a little 2.5 gallon pico that we put any crabs or other critters we're unsure about into. "Pest tanks" are pretty neat to look at and it saves you the guilt trip of having killed a cool looking critter just because of its eating habits ;)

As a side note: I wonder how many gorilla crabs are in your tank that you haven't seen yet though... you might want to keep the bottle trap in there a while after you catch it and see if any more fall in ;)

[sir_dudeguy]

I think it is just the one gorrilla crab in there. I know exactly when it was that i first got him. I got it in a button polyp colony a long time ago and he lived in there for a while. I just never knew what it was and it didnt do anything so it just left my mind, you knwo? And then i was transfering that button polyp rock to my brothers tank and thats when i noticed it. I've never seen any other crabs in any of my tanks besides the ones i put in which are hermits (one of the biggest mistakes yet) and an emerald crab (one of the best ones yet lol).

One question tho. What do gorillas eat? Are they good cleaners? If so, i could just throw him in the sump. Or i could put him in a 3g pico like you say you did. I also have actually done that. I put in all the hermits that i had in my old tank.

[kiknchikn]

I'm not positive but I believe they're omnivores so they'll eat just about anything they get their claws on. I'd put it in the sump myself rather than killing it. It should be able to live off detritus and whatever else makes its way in there.

Hermit crabs are jerks. I don't think my next tank will have any.