Help! Crabs eating Torch Coral

[ericgreathouse]

My Blue-Legged hermit crabs are eating my torch coral. They started on one branch yesterday and ate the whole thing before I noticed at the very end, then started on brach #2. Branch #2 was perfectly healthy before they went after him. Is this because of a lack of available food for the Blue-Legs? I don't have too many.

[Sk8r]

I don't know what sort of blue-legs you have, but they're sure different than mine, which are about the diameter of a matchhead at the max, live in cerith shells and couldn't climb a torch if their shells depended on it. They are black, with a hint of red on the antennae, and why they're called blue-legs has always puzzled me---or maybe it's my Ushio bulb.

I did see a photo of what someone was sold as a blue-leg and it was real supicious-looking. I'd pull those little beggars out to the sump and go get some reliable scarlets...and I'm a big fan of hermit crabs in a reef tank.

[Chihuahua6]

I had blue and red legged crabs in the past that munched on the xenia a few times. It was due to lack of available food in my case. I started to drop a few pellets of food into the tank every couple of days and they stopped eating the xenia.