Does Algae Grow on Your Crabs?

[Anthony Kochevar]

I'm going to start off by saying I don't have a algae problem(knock on wood). Oh, I get the usual film on the glass and I have cheato in the refugium I trim once a month. But my bare rock work has nothing on it, always clean to the naked eye, and no hair algae or diatoms in the sandbed. The one place that does have algae is my poor porcelain crab. She looks great just after a molt but a week later brown diatoms form on her and then they turn to hair. I feel bad for her but don't know what to do. She is active and always eats well.

Is this normal? If not what can be done?

 

[Idoc]

it grows like crazy on my snail shells, so i don't see why it wouldn't on a crab shell. I don't have any crabs, though.

 

[Jeeperz]

My emeralds use to grow it and eat it off themselves

 

[Anthony Kochevar]

Pic of the crab, as you can see from the bare rock areas I got no algae on them, just the crab.

 

[TriggerFinger]

I’ve never seen my porcelain crabs grow algae on their shells but mine tend to stay underneath rock ledges. Hermits and snails clean each other’s shells but I doubt a porcelain crab would allow that.

 

[Jknight]

Some of my snails have their shells heavily covered.

 

[NashobaTek]

Snails covered by algae, except for the cowrie snails

 

[Waters]

My snails have algae also.....come to think of it, when I had my seahorse tank, the seahorses sometimes grew algae on them lol.

 

[Anthony Kochevar]

And just like that, an hour after I took that photo above, she molted and is squeaky clean again.

 

[Bryan68]

Can't help with your algae issue, but your pics are awesome.