White Xenia Crab

GGG

New Member
I was looking at my friends Xenia and I saw at perfectly camouflaged white crab that would peek out of it occasionally. It was about 3/4 of an inch long. I don't see any noticeable damage yet. He has had the piece for about a week now. I've looked everywhere but I can't find anything about them. Bad or good?
 

dragon79

New Member
GGG said:
I was looking at my friends Xenia and I saw at perfectly camouflaged white crab that would peek out of it occasionally. It was about 3/4 of an inch long. I don't see any noticeable damage yet. He has had the piece for about a week now. I've looked everywhere but I can't find anything about them. Bad or good?
What you are probably looking at most likely is a white anemone crab perhaps. They'll host just about anything :) Mine does.

Welcome to nanotank by the way. Good to see somebody who's local, I'm from Anaheim too :) Laterz.
 

GGG

New Member
Thanks dragon79. I thought it might be an anemone crab but from what I've seen it doesnt fit the profile. Although I havent seen too much of it since it barely peeks out. The one thing that makes me think its not an anemone crab is that it has very fine claws not the fatter claws that I've seen in pictures. Might have to capture it to get the real scoop.

Thanks for the welcome. Where do you prefer to get your corals and fish in our area? The two best places I've found are Pacific Reef off Lincoln and Tongs in Fountain Valley.

Peace!
 

dragon79

New Member
I been searching on Reef Central, and Nano-reef for the differences on the porcelain anemone crab and the Porcelain crab......is there a real difference? Everytime I enter anemone crab or porcelain crab I get a picture like the one I have...



The only other pic I get that is kinda different is this picture:


I continued searching but it shows there are different color porcelain crabs, red, blue, but I did not see an all white one. Perhaps incysor can help me and you to see the difference.
 

dragon79

New Member
oh yeah forgot, GGG. Tongs is awesome for selling corals and little frags, as well as their big selection of fish. I like Pacific Reef for it's nearby, I can get general things there and sometimes a fish. The guy who works there is cool too (Mike). There are a few others I need to check out......they are more in the HB area though :)

My all time favorite though is Tongs though, they can't be beat :)
 

GGG

New Member
Thanks everyone. I spent a good portion of the weekened trying to get answers. It's definetley not an anemone/porcelain crab. It's pure white with no color at all and it looks nothing like the pics I've seen. The claws are very short and thin. It's a mystery. I'll do my best to convince my friend to let me thrash his tank to catch it and I'll post a pic. :smile: He's had his tank up for almost two months now and depends on me for all of his technical info. I'm pretty much a reef rookie myself. God I love experimenting with other peoples money. :twisted:
 

incysor

New Member
Does it look like this?


This was taken from the full frame image that I posted earlier here.
http://nanotank.com/viewtopic.php?t=1194

This one is obviously in an acropora of some kind. Over on RC they're usually simply called acro crabs. Sometimes bandit crabs because some of them have a black band across the front of them near their eyes.

You might try doing a search for commensal crab. There are tons of images on the web of different types of crabs that live in particular types of corals. I didn't see any that are xenia specific, but that doesn't mean that there aren't any.
I came across lots of comments about people finding crabs in xenia, but no images or anthything that was definative as to whether they were good or bad.

B
 
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