Emerald Crab - Good or bad on my LPS?

[LIreefguy]

I hear you
I had an dwaft angel that suddenly grew a taste for lps after 4 years

man in 1 day it destroyed 5 colonies on me

 

[Sharkbait19]

Mine appeared to be a female. Really hairy legs and smaller arms/claws. It went after clove polyps as well, calmed down with age. Seemed to like the dying ones the best. He also would mess with my torch coral (eventually stopped). Loved ripping things off rocks making fixing things down hard. I also watched it rip my brittle star in half. In its defense I didn’t feed it often, so it had to eat something after cleaning out the algae.
Total pain in the neck but would totally try again. This time I would make sure to target feed it as necessary.

 

[Sharkbait19]

Also for what it's worth, since I got rid of my emeralds I added about 5 times as many blue legs to keep algae at bae, I think they're actually doing better as a larger team than my emeralds did.

That’s definitely an option. Only issue is that only emeralds seem to like bubble…and that hermits also have a bad reputation. But I agree there are other options. My army of astrea snails does a great job with most algaes.

 

[Leadfooted]

That’s definitely an option. Only issue is that only emeralds seem to like bubble…and that hermits also have a bad reputation. But I agree there are other options. My army of astrea snails does a great job with most algaes

Agreed with all! I've heard some fish will assist with bubble algae but Emeralds are the ultimate for that. Just keep your fingers crossed lol

 

[Dkmoo]

They are omnivores so they can eat anything, including corals. However that doesn't mean they will.. they will go after the easier food first - algae, left over fish food. If starved they will go after corals. Also, oftentimes they are cleaning up on dead/dying coral flesh and are mistakenly blamed for the death of a coral but in really they are just doing their CUC duties.

I've kept them for as long as my tank was running, 5 years now. My 2 emerals in the 30G went from the size of a dime to the size of a silver dollar. Never touched my corals.

I feed heavy, there's always something for them to much on.

 

[Sharkbait19]

Agreed with all! I've heard some fish will assist with bubble algae but Emeralds are the ultimate for that. Just keep your fingers crossed lol

Sad to say the bubble algae is starting to spread. Some came on an acan and I’m seeing it all around. Might be picking up an emerald at the next lfs trip. Hopefully there’s will be less carnivorous than petco’s.

 

[Dkmoo]

Sad to say the bubble algae is starting to spread. Some came on an acan and I’m seeing it all around. Might be picking up an emerald at the next lfs trip. Hopefully there’s will be less carnivorous than petco’s.

Do you have other algae in your tank? Like gha?

IME, emeralds aren't as effective if there gha around bc they will go after that first. I had a pretty bad bubble infestation that took months without noticeable progress. The finally what work was that I used reef flux RX to melt all the gha first. Then 1 week after treatment I started seeing bubbles disappear. 2 week after treatment 100% bubble gone. I havent read that fluconazole works on bubbles so the only theory I can think of is that with GHA gone it limited the emeralds diet to only bubbles

 

[Sharkbait19]

Do you have other algae in your tank? Like gha?

IME, emeralds aren't as effective if there gha around bc they will go after that first. I had a pretty bad bubble infestation that took months without noticeable progress. The finally what work was that I used reef flux RX to melt all the gha first. Then 1 week after treatment I started seeing bubbles disappear. 2 week after treatment 100% bubble gone. I havent read that fluconazole works on bubbles so the only theory I can think of is that with GHA gone it limited the emeralds diet to only bubbles

No gha that I’ve seen, but I’m sure it’s in there. I had a lot in the ugly stages but since then there hasn’t been much at all. I have noticed what looks like bryopsis, but other than the usual strings or films on rocks I haven’t seen much besides the bubble. My hermits and snails are doing their jobs.

 

[Paston1]

Watch it. The next day see if the coral is happier. On mine I’m happy with the emerald goes to it. Let’s me know it’s about to get cleaned and the next day look better. Aussie grail hammer 5-7 heads. I was happy when I saw it last night in it. Today it was out and beautiful as ever.