Crab ID (Kp aquatics shipment in QT)

[David3147]

ID crab please. Cute...but viscous looking claws. KP ruble shipment, so far so good. No odor. Some purple colored already. re: traps for the QT: small plastic bottle soda, plastic cup surrounded by rock...anything else i should use?



also this dead fragment of some sort of spiked worm (maybe)?

 

[JoJosReef]

That is a porcelain crab. Harmless and quite fun to have. Can't tell what species exactly, but kudos!

Edit: Harmless is relative. It won't attack your fish/inverts unless it feels threatened or something wanders into a space it's decided is its spot. That's what those vicious claws are for :~)

 

[ISpeakForTheSeas]

JojosReef beat me to it - it looks like a porcelain crab of some kind.

 

[JoJosReef]

JojosReef beat me to it - it looks like a porcelain crab of some kind.

Was hoping to see you here with a genus and species! It's actually a very attractive specimen.

 

[David3147]

JojosReef beat me to it - it looks like a porcelain crab of some kind.

So 3 legs + their claws = porcelain crab = harmless ?

 

[JoJosReef]

So 3 legs + their claws = porcelain crab = harmless ?

Yup. Porcelain crabs are not true crabs. They're actually more closely related to squat lobsters (wikipedia). Their 4th pair of "legs" you can sometimes see behind them tucked in, and they untuck them to clean themselves off. Kind of like a windshield wiper that can move in more than one direction. I've noticed that they all have this type of upper pincer that is a bit convex (downward slope from base of pincer, leveling off). You'll also notice the "fans" that they use for filter feeding.

I like them. Have 3 kinds in my tanks, and I target feed them. They will happily take pellets like TDO. My blue porcelain goes nuts for a piece of flake food. And I also have liquid reef nutrition food that I'll shoot their way and they fan it up, especially the green porcelain that prefers to actively wave its fans to catch food, whereas the nem crab and blue porcelain prefer to hold their fans out and wait for stuff to come by in the flow.

 

[ISpeakForTheSeas]

Was hoping to see you here with a genus and species! It's actually a very attractive specimen.

Haha, the best I can do this time is Petrolisthes sp. - there are a few species that can look somewhat similar to this that I know (such as P. armatus), but the brownish-red patch on the top there is throwing me off.

Edit: For anyone interested, I still don't know the species, but Seahorse Savvy apparently carries these crabs on occasion:

Pink Porcelain Crab

This is for a single Pink Porcelain Crab, Petrolisthes sp. Size: ~0.75-1 inch These hardy crabs are great scavengers in the aquarium. This color variety is uncommon and limited availability. In a 30 gallon aquarium we recommend 1-3 of these crabs to give you a general stocking idea. They are...

seahorsesavvy.com