Neptune Aquatics

My coral has crabs

I found a neat little hairy crab on one of my corals over the weekend. At first I thought it might be one of the harmless types of coral crabs so I let it be. I think I may have been mistaken :/ Over the last 3 nights the coral as slowly started deteriorating in the areas where the crab has been hanging out. It appeared that it was munching on the coral but it was really hard to tell for sure. I don't know if it was eating the coral because it was deteriorating or if the coral was deteriorating because the crab was eating it.

I pulled the coral out tonight and extracted the crab. It's either playing possum in the specimen cup or I was a bit too harsh with the forceps during the extraction. Either way it's out of the coral now. Anybody now what kind of crab this is or can point me in a direction where I might be able to research it a little more?

Here's a pic of it on the coral with the crab:


The crab post extraction:


And a few more pics of both in the album:


The pics aren't all that great. Some are a little blurry. It's a small crab, maybe a 1/4", so it was hard to get a good close up of it.

~Charlie
 
I just looked at it with a magnifying glass and it sure does have blue eyes! If it's not the same crab it's definitely a close relative with the same tastes. Very nice, thank you!

No new recession on the coral tonight either. Hopefully it will start growing back now.

Thanks,
Charlie
 
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