need help

[Jeff cousteau]

I have been fighting a war with crabs ever since I got my live rock a few months ago. I have had an obscene amount of hitchikers in the rock good and bad. I got 25lbs from jakarta and I've removed 20 or more crabs so far of at least 4 different species. I've only seen 2 smaller ones the last little while until lastnight. I had to work really late and when I got home the timer on my moonlights had shut off. Sure enough I grab a flashlight and take a look around to see 5 crabs the biggest about the size of your thumb nail. I wanted to rip the top off the tank and get them outa there but my tank is in my bedroom and my gf was sleeping at 4am.

All I have for fish is a very large pj cardnal, for corals a couple of shrooms, a leather, yellow polyp colony, 2 zoo's and 1 paly. so far the only losses I had were some of the tenticles of the yellow polyps from the blue and red legged hermits I had but, they have been removed.

Not knowing the extent of my crab problem yesterday I placed an order for 16 different zoo/paly frags ($$$) to arrive tuesday and am getting 12 heads + of frogspawn tomorrow. My plan was to put all the zoo's on the bottom of the tank and the frogspawn top middle on the rocks.

WHAT SHOULD I DO???


1 option I've been thinking is, I have a 5.5 nano I just set up 3 weeks ago and it's not quite ready. I could do daily water changes I guess til it was ,I did seed it with some sand from my other tank. has no lr in it except for some rubble, could get a small peice of 3 year old lr for it tomorrow, this would'nt be big enough for the frogspawn and would'nt hold everthing else but the most expensive stuff could go in there.

Another option, I have bought a bigger tank to use with a sump (has to be drilled) I'm planning on setting up in a few months. I may be able to buy 25-30lbs of the 3 year old LR from the guy I'm getting the frogspawn from. I would have to get the new rock and frogspawn, drive an hour home. take out my current LR full of crabs put them in a rubbermaid with a pwr head for later use in my sump, put the new rock in the tank. add more water then acclimitize the frogspawn. this would give me almost 3 days before the new zoo's arrive. if I took his rock put it into his tank water got it in my tank in less then 2 hrs there should'nt be any die off or need for cycling should there?

I could just try adding more crab traps, keeping the lights off longer at night and, removing them one at a time as I see them. Here's some actual pics of the types of crabs i've found in my tank:

Mithrax?http://reefcentral.com/gallery/data/565/190604100_0215.jpg
no cluehttp://reefcentral.com/gallery/data/565/190604crab_eating.jpg xanthid??
http://reefcentral.com/gallery/data/565/190604100_0103.JPG
another xanthid?http://reefcentral.com/gallery/data/565/190604100_0219.jpg
http://reefcentral.com/gallery/data/565/190604100_0306.jpg

[Playa-1]

Since you don't have alot of livestock at this point, I would put the livestock in the QT and drain the display into a rubbermaid container.
A simple and very effective way to treat for and eliminate unwanted critters from fresh Live Rock is to dip each piece in a bucket of very saline water (SG 1.030) for 20-30 seconds. Mantis shrimp will quickly evacuate the rock. Bristle worms will also crawl out and can be pulled from their holes with tweezers. Also take the opportunity and physically remove anything else on the rock that you don't want on there.
Some people have more luck with this method than others but, It's worth a shot and It will be much easier now then it will after you get it stocked up.

[greggnyce]

you can also bury a jar in the substrate, angled so the crabs can climb into it, place some bait inside and they will not be able to climb back out, because they cannot get a grip on the glass on the inside of the jar.

[Jeff cousteau]

so I should drain the tank into the rubber maid and take each peice of rock out into a bucket with 1.30 SG water for 30 seconds, removing anything that crawls out. once I do all the rocks I would put them back into the tank with the water from the rubbermaid? would this kill the good bacteria? what about alge?

[Jeff cousteau]

I'vve made traps out of pop bottles but they hav'nt worked that well, cought a few but the ones left are tricky. didn't even know they were theretil lastnight.

[Jeff cousteau]

I've made traps out of pop bottles but they hav'nt worked that well, cought a few but the ones left are tricky. didn't even know they were theretil lastnight.

[Playa-1]

The dip just makes the creature uncomfortable and in theory they will want to look for a new place to hang out that is more suitable for them. It should not affect the bacteria or the algae at all. You can pull each rock out and dip it, clean and inspect and drop it into the rubbermaid container. This would allow you to get all the way to the sandbed and maybe you should even sift the top of the sand bed to make sure nothing sneaky is hiding out in there.
I think that would go along way in solving your problem. If this works properly it would allow you to sift through the hitchhikers and keep what you want.

The hardest part will be reaquascaping when your done.
Then just return the water to the tank let it settle a bit and return your livestock to the tank.

With my luck I would go thru that, and then tomorrow at 3am, I would look in the tank and there would be a crab still in there laughing at me :lol:

[Jeff cousteau]

mine too, I've been at this for 4 months now, thought I had them just about beat..lol

[Jeff cousteau]

instead of moving the livestock to the qt tank(since it's not fully cycled) coudl I just put them in the rubbermaid

[Playa-1]

You could just use some of the water in the display to fill the qt or you could put them in the rubbermaid.

[nmbeg]

i had similar xanthid trouble... got rid of many, but 2 that I know of still remain...... i just said "forget it" and left them.... don't seem to be causing too much trouble just yet.