First SPS

[jaBX1]

I bought my first SPS frags/colonies yesterday. i have mostly lps and wanted to make the jump since i feel my water is up to par.

I acclimated them as i usually do with a slow drip. and took extra care to dip with lugols becuase all the horror stories i read are usually dealing with SPS. quite a few critters came off during the process which made me feel better.

Today i see the polyps are extended and everything seemed fine. upon closer inspection i noticed somthing white moing between the branches of one. It was a small white crab. Is this bad?

Ive heard of some species of crab living w acropora but ive heard more about them eating corals.
Does anyone know what this small white crab is? it is in the smaller, pink/purple coral
an ID of the species of coral would be helpful too.

any and all advice is appreciated

 

[Ant8689]

I have a large sps piece after a few days u saw what looked like a shell below it and looked and saw the smallest pinkish white crab. I've left him alone for now. He doesn't leave the piece of acro. My wrasse tries to get him and he tries clip with his claw. Pretty cool

 

[SteveZ15]

Small white crab with a black line on the bottom of his shell?Thats an acro crab they live there and keep the coral clean,I have one they dont harm the coral.

 

[jaBX1]

Small white crab with a black line on the bottom of his shell?Thats an acro crab they live there and keep the coral clean,I have one they dont harm the coral.

thats the crab.

thanks for the info

 

[tomtoothdoc]

don't want to get you paranoid but if the lugol's dip didn't kill the crab, there may be other hitch hikers that aren't killed either.

for acro's, there are other dips that are better than lugol's, imo. you should try coral rx and research on what to look for....red bugs, aefw and their eggs.

i personally use the bayer advanced complete insect killer for acro's but it's a bit tricky and need some learning curve. it kills everything (except eggs)...including the corals....lol.

 

[jerl77]

Bayer is the only way to go jmo

 

[ecvernon]

The smooth white shelled crab is the good kind. One of the common bad kind are the gorilla crabs. They are hairy and have black tipped claws

 

[jaBX1]

Thanks everyone for the info

It's definitely the smooth white crab. Has a stripe.

I will have to go to hardware store soon and get bayer. It is better with sps than lugols?