Emerald crab acting strange...

[TheEngineer]

About a month ago I bought an emerald crab from the LFS to help with the algae problem in my DT. I drip acclimated it over 30 minutes and added it to my coral QT. Later that day it looked dead. I picked it up and it was limp. I thought it was dead, but I noticed it's mouth moving so I put it back in the tank. Over the next few days it would move around here and there but super slowly. Then it suddenly died. There was plenty of algae in there, so I don't think it would have starved. I couldn't explain it and just chalked it up to being sick from the jump...

The coral QT turned into a fish QT and now my corals are in a 3g cube on my desk.

I went to a frag swap this weekend and picked up another. This one is huge! Same process, 30 minute drip acclimation and into the coral QT. It was riding my snails around the tank for the first day. Yesterday it started the day parked on top of a zoa frag and stayed there. It was in the same place this morning. It has since moved half way off the rock and is otherwise motionless.

There are a ton of snails in this same tank (25 ceriths and 6 nerites) and they all appear to be acting normally. Any ideas what might be going on?

 

[DeniseAndy]

Sometimes crabs are hit and miss. I will have some get huge and live a long time, and some that do not. Could be shipping, food issue (such as not what the crab wants), or just not adjust to tank life.

For some reason I just assume my cleanup crew to be dwindled by a min of 25% after the first month. Since I usually get a rather large one, I cannot possibly accurately check this. I do notice that I have empty shells and such after that time.